The Key to the Brontë Works / The Key to Charlotte Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights,' 'Jane Eyre,' and her other works.

Montagu's frequent references to the mountainous character of the Malham country were doubtless responsible for Charlotte Brontë's choice of the word "heights" used in her title. Why the name of Gimmer, from "gimmer" a female sheep, and signifying with "ton" the place of sheep, was chosen by her for Gimmerton, is clear when we read the etymology Montagu gives of Skipton. He mentions Skibden and Skipton, proceeding to explain that "Skipton, or Sceptown (from the Saxon word 'scep,' a sheep)" meant "the town of sheep"; and Montagu tells us a native spoke of the village as "the town of Malham." Hence we perceive why Charlotte Brontë coined "Gimmerton," the village of sheep, and "Gimmerden," the valley of sheep, for Malham and Malhamdale with the source of the Aire, the Fairy Cave, the Sough, the adjacent crags, the heights, the glens, the rising mists, the Methodist chapel and kirk in the lonely vale, when in the light of all the foregoing we read in Montagu's work that:—

"Here [at Malham] there is an annual fair held on the 15th of October, appropriated entirely for the sale of sheep.[35] I am within the limit of fact when I say that upwards of one hundred thousand [sheep] have been shown at one time. [Joseph takes cattle to "Gimmerton Fair," of course not in October.] The houses are mostly built of limestone, and covered with grit slates, and irregularly situated at the base of a range of steep mountains"—"the Heights."

Malham he describes as "a small township, divided into east and west portions by a rapid stream"—"the beck down Gimmerton." "There is a Methodist chapel at Malham," he states, and says that the old church of Kirkby-Malham "is in the very bosom of the vale of Malham." Thus Gimmerton Kirk, in the lonely valley of Gimmerton,[36] was Charlotte Brontë's name in Wuthering Heights for the kirk by Malham, in the lonely vale of Malham. This insight into the origin of the name of "kirk" for a Yorkshire church excuses what, without it, would have been an anachronistic misnomer. As for the Nonconformists' place of worship, Dean is made to remark:—"They call the Methodists' or Baptists' place—I can't say which it is at Gimmerton—a chapel."

In the light of the foregoing evidence it is impossible to ignore the reference Montagu makes to "the sinks," where the water from Malham Tarn sinks underground for a considerable distance. Whether Charlotte Brontë thought this would produce a quag in the neighbourhood I cannot tell; but if she has used the word "sough" (pronounced suff) in its ordinary acceptance in Yorkshire, she originally meant "a subterranean passage or tunnel, draining water as from a sink," if I may quote a definition in Dr. Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary. There is every sign in her writings of a loose, composite adaptation of Montagu's topography, etc., yet Charlotte Brontë was ever jealous of associations, and under a guise or not she frequently preserved carefully recognizable characteristics necessary to locality and to personality; and we see Montagu had associated a sough with Malham. We have mention of Gimmerton Sough in Chapter III. of Wuthering Heights, and in Chapter X.:—"... the valley of Gimmerton, with a long list of mist winding nearly to its top (for very soon after you pass the chapel ... the sough that runs from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen). Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour." And we have read what Montagu says about the mists of Malham.

The influence of Montagu's descriptions of this wild locality is likewise observable in the scenery and the background of Jane Eyre,[37] as I mentioned in the article "The Key to Jane Eyre" I wrote in The Saturday Review. The yews and evergreens, mentioned by Montagu in connection with Malham, and introduced by Charlotte Brontë, with other trees of the fir-tribe, in descriptions of Morton in Jane Eyre, Chap. XXX., etc., and in Wuthering Heights, are not common to Haworth.

CHAPTER VIII.

Charlotte Brontë, while she often portrayed the main characters of her stories from people in her own life, was quite at home with them in whatsoever condition or surroundings she placed them.[38] She loved the memory of Tabitha Aykroyd—that faithful servant, companion, and friend; hated the vices of her brother Branwell Brontë, and was obsessed by thoughts of M. Héger, her Brussels friend. So she placed the good old housekeeper of the parsonage—under an ecclesiastical cognomen truly—as Mrs. Dean at Wuthering Heights; set up her brother Branwell on the same premises as Hindley Earnshaw, and put her Brussels friend in the position of master of that abode.

In Jane Eyre Tabitha Aykroyd is Bessie of Mrs. Reed's household, and Hannah of the Rivers family; Branwell is among better surroundings as John Reed, and M. Héger is portrayed more proportionately as the master of Thornfield; while in the same work Charlotte Brontë portrays her own sister Maria Brontë, and makes her say she is a native of Northumberland and describe the scenery round her birthplace there!

In Shirley Charlotte admits to having placed Emily Brontë as "Shirley Keeldar," surrounded by the environment of a wealthy woman—a landed proprietress in the Dewsbury neighbourhood; and she gives us phases of M. Héger as a resident of Yorkshire, in the two Moores.

Villette contains in Dr. John, towards the close, a portrait of the Rev. Mr. Nicholls, who became her husband, as a resident of the foreign town Villette—for I find the character Dr. John was a portrait not wholly drawn, as is supposed, from Mr. Smith of Messrs. Smith & Elder, the Brontë publishers; and glimpses of Mr. Thackeray as a Villette lecturer appear in a flitting usurpation of M. Héger's rights as the original of M. Paul.

Charlotte Brontë's thus placing given characters against any background is doubtless responsible for the fact that when I wrote the Fortnightly Review article, "The Lifting of the Brontë Veil: A New Study of the Brontë Family," in March, 1907, nigh on sixty years of readers of the Brontë works had failed to recognize Charlotte Brontë had portrayed in Jane Eyre not only herself and her sister, Maria Brontë, as was commonly known, but also her brother, Branwell Brontë; her Aunt Branwell; her cousin, Eliza Branwell; her sister, Elizabeth Brontë; her sister, Emily Brontë; her sister, Anne Brontë; her father, the Rev. Patrick Brontë; and also Tabitha Aykroyd, the Brontë servant. Perhaps it was because readers believed Morton was Hathersage, Derbyshire, that a suspicion of the Rivers family being the Brontë family at Haworth never had been entertained.

I found, however, that all the above-mentioned members of the Brontë family were placed in Jane Eyre under a "Rivers" surname; and proceeding into the inquiry as to their identity, I perceived this discovery of the Brontë family in Jane Eyre numbered with the more important of my Brontë discoveries, and that despite her purposed and reasonable cross-scents—the spired church, the mention of knife-grinders, and the hinting at the proximity of Sheffield, all so necessary in her day to permit the portrayal of phases of the life at Haworth Parsonage—Morton to Charlotte Brontë was in the main Haworth. What importance would attach to a discovery of an unknown portrait group of his family deliberately painted from life by an old master! Such is the importance of this discovery of the Brontë family drawn by the pen of Charlotte Brontë herself in Jane Eyre. Currer Bell portrayed with unvarying truth; and with cunning artistry she brought forward in her literary legacy to the English novel the sure characteristics—the very soul, the shallowness, the pretty affectionateness, the cooing "dove-like voice," the "blue steel glance," of those she had watched and loved and feared.

Now, in the selection of a Christian name for the heroine Jane Eyre, in whom she had portrayed herself, there was every reason why Charlotte Brontë would be unlikely to adopt the second name of her sister, Emily Jane. We have seen, however, that Charlotte Brontë had been led by Montagu's mention of the Fairy Jannet, or Janet, poetically to make her heroine a Fairy Janet. This evidence shows, therefore, that "Jane" was really only secondary. The Fairy Cave which this fairy was supposed to frequent is near Malham or Gimmerton, and, as I have said, the Fairy Janet is termed "the queen of the Malhamdale elves that frequent the enchanted land round the source of the Aire." Montagu mentions the fact that the river Ayre takes its rise at Malham—at Malham Tarn, and hence Charlotte Brontë seems to have named her heroine originally Janet Aire. Obvious it is she would be led, naturally, to use later some variant of Aire or Ayre; and the fact that she visited in the summer of 1845 (evidence shows she had read Montagu at the time)[39] her friend Miss Nussey, then at Hathersage in Derbyshire, where Eyre is a common name, would suggest she was led to adopt this variant through her visit there. We already have seen Charlotte Brontë used the variant of "Hare" for "Air" in Wuthering Heights for the boy Hareton from Montagu's boy-guide, Robert Airton. And that she wished in Jane Eyre to break through the confines of the variant she had chosen for Aire, and give open expression to her original and poetic idea, is seen plainly enough where Adèle asks:—

Having made this interesting discovery, I further found that, not satisfied with appropriating for herself the "stream" surname, she placed such a surname upon those who were related to her and whom she had portrayed in Jane Eyre. So she used Burns from "burn," a stream spelt with an "s," for Maria Brontë; Rivers, from a river also spelt with an "s," for Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, and the Rev. Patrick Brontë, with Tabitha Aykroyd in attendance as Hannah; Reed, from the river of that name for Charlotte's Aunt Branwell, her cousin Eliza Branwell, and her brother, Branwell Brontë; Severn, from the river of that name for her sister Elizabeth Brontë—just as she used Aire from the river of that name for herself, as Janet Aire.

A reference to Mrs. Gaskell's Brontë Life were sufficient to establish the identifications, when I say that by Charlotte Brontë's Method II. (the alteration of the age of a character portrayed) the Rev. Patrick Brontë is represented as a young man in the Rev. St. John Eyre Rivers—certainly a very necessary obfuscation, for it is to be seen the home at Morton gives a most enlightening insight into the life at the Haworth Parsonage. A death is supposed to have occurred in the Rivers family; and when it is remembered Thornfield to Charlotte Brontë represented the Hégers' establishment at Brussels, and that she left Brussels the first time on account of the death of her aunt, Miss Elizabeth Branwell who, after being the female head of the parsonage some years, died there in the close of 1842, we may know for whom the Rivers family were really in mourning. Charlotte Brontë tells us that, looking through the window of Moor House—Haworth Parsonage:—

Charlotte seems to have portrayed particularly those happy months at home in 1842, when, after the death of their aunt, all three sisters were together and their brother Branwell was away. It is Anne Brontë who, as Mary Rivers, consults her watch. For the circumstances in which she acquired this gold watch see the will of Miss Elizabeth Branwell, her aunt.[40]

The Brontë sisters were "always children in the eyes of Tabitha." Continuing her description of her sisters, Charlotte as Jane says:—

The following is the portrait of Charlotte Brontë's father (Method II., the altering the age of the character portrayed) as her imagination pictured him to have been in his young days. St. John's was the Rev. Patrick Brontë's college at Cambridge:—

Charlotte Brontë's references herewith, and in other instances, to the passionate nature of her father are interesting reading, especially in view of the fact that this point has been the subject of controversy. To return to Jane Eyre:—

Mrs. Gaskell states that even in his old age Mr. Brontë[41] was a tall and a striking-looking man, with a nobly shaped head and erect carriage, and that in youth he must have been unusually handsome. And to use the words of Hannah, "Mr. St. John when he grew up would go to college and be a parson." Continuing, Mrs. Gaskell further says:—

Another writer accentuating this says Mr. Brontë was "proud of his Greek profile," and we have now seen that Charlotte Brontë herself says his (St. John's) face was "like a Greek face, pure in outline." Mr. Brontë had also "fine blue eyes," like Mr. St. John. "His (Mr. Brontë's) passionate nature was compressed down with stoicism, but it was there, notwithstanding all his philosophic calm and dignity of demeanour, though he did not speak when displeased. He was an active walker, stretching away over the moors for many miles. He dined alone, and did not require companionship."

Which is, of course, all consonant with what we read of St. John Eyre Rivers. Charlotte Brontë continues:—

"Charlotte Brontë," says Miss Laura C. Holloway, "early exhibited antagonistic feelings towards the Calvinistic views of her father." And so I might continue at great length. Excluding the love passages necessary to "story" and the missionary suggestions for which it seems that Brussels priest whom I may call Charlotte Brontë's Fénelon was originally responsible, the portrayal of the Rev. Patrick Brontë, like that of Charlotte's sisters, is absolutely true to prototype and fact.[42] We discover that at heart Charlotte Brontë loved her father, hence she honoured him—the head of the "Rivers" family—by giving him the final word in her autobiography, speaking of him as he appeared to her: an old man whose days were drawing to a close. Jane relates of Morton:—

In Charlotte Brontë's mind this was Haworth Parsonage; but it is clear that, despite the church "spire" and other efforts at obfuscation, she did not dare to portray her sisters and father in the parsonage. Thus she placed the family in another house. And now we will have another glimpse of Tabitha Aykroyd, this time as "Hannah," speaking her Haworth Yorkshire dialect:—

Emily Brontë as Diana says it is "a privilege we exercise in our home to prepare our own meals when ... so inclined, or when Hannah [Tabby] is baking, brewing, washing or ironing," which of course was true at Haworth Parsonage. To give yet another description:—

Then follow pictures of the life at Haworth Parsonage, which tell us how Charlotte Brontë adored her sisters; and with the modesty of true genius she places herself at their feet, as it were. We have a sketch of Tabitha Aykroyd ironing Aunt Branwell's lace frills and crimping her nightcap borders in Jane Eyre, Chapter I., wherein both figure as Bessie and Aunt Reed. Years ago it came to be thought the original of Jane Eyre's Aunt Reed was Miss Branwell, the aunt of the Brontë children, though one writer identified her with a certain Mrs. Sidgwick whose son threw a book at Miss Brontë in her governess days, because "the son of Mrs. Reed" threw a Bible at Jane Eyre. The fact the rainy-day narrations in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre establish, that Charlotte Brontë associated a "volume-hurling" incident with her childhood and Branwell Brontë's "tyranny," disposed finally of the Sidgwick identifications. John Reed we have now seen was, like Hindley Earnshaw, Catherine's brother, drawn by Charlotte Brontë from her brother Branwell Brontë. Always she wrote of him vindictively, and with a retributive justice, her strong characteristic. At about the period when Currer Bell was penning Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre Branwell was a source of considerable distress to her. He was disgraced; his habits were the reverse of temperate, and it was daily feared that in a fit of delirium he might make an attempt upon his own life. Indeed Charlotte Brontë palpably writes of Branwell Brontë and those miserable associations which brought trouble upon Mrs. Gaskell's first edition of the Brontë Life, in The Professor, Chapter XX., where she says:—

Charlotte's letters also show she was ashamed of and losing patience with him. John Reed is spoken of as "a dissipated young man; they will never make much of him, I think.... Some people call him a fine-looking young man; but he has such thick lips." For obfuscation's sake he is "tall," and Mrs. Gaskell in speaking of Branwell's profile says:—"There are coarse lines about the mouth, and the lips, though handsome in shape, are loose and thick, indicating self-indulgence." Aunt Reed exclaims at the last of her favourite:—"John is sunken and degraded, his look is frightful—I feel ashamed for him when I see him." It was near the time that Aunt Branwell died at Haworth there was this decided degradation of her favourite nephew Branwell. For story purposes Charlotte Brontë makes her aunt a married woman in Jane Eyre, and places her nephew Branwell and her niece Eliza Branwell in the relation of children to her as John and Eliza Reed—Georgiana is no doubt a Brontë relative of whom we have not heard, and Charlotte thought vain. The fact that in Jane Eyre, Chapter XXI., her name is mentioned in connection with "a title," would show Currer Bell early apportioned her a place in the book by reason of Montagu's reference to a Lady Georgiana.

A child, sympathetic and intensely emotional, Charlotte Brontë, evidently, felt injustices with an acuteness not easy to understand without reading her Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre by aid of The Key to the Brontë Works. It would be like Maria Brontë to protest with her younger sister on her holding resentment against Aunt Branwell; and with the inference that she herself had endured her harshness, she says as Helen Burns:—"What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Would it not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited?"

Of Eliza Reed (Cousin Eliza Branwell), as seen by Jane at the death of Aunt Reed, we are told: "she was now very thin, and there was something ascetic in her look." She wore "a nun-like ornament of a string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza, though I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage." In 1840 Charlotte Brontë wrote of her "Cousin Eliza Branwell" that she spoke of nothing but botany, her own conversion, Low Church, Evangelical clergy, and the Millennium.[43] And thus in Jane Eyre we read of Cousin Eliza Reed, by way of emphasis on this side of her character:—

The river Reed, I may remark, has its rise close to the Cheviot Hills, within about five miles of the source of the Keeldar Burn, which name Charlotte Brontë used later in Shirley for the surname of Shirley Keeldar who, the world knows, is really Emily Brontë. To quote a ballad of Leyden,

The Reed has a Rochester near, which doubtless provided a name for Charlotte's hero.

Having now the key to this method of Charlotte Brontë, we also discover portrayed in Jane Eyre an utterly neglected sister of Currer Bell in Julia Severn, called after a river. Remembering that Emily Brontë would be younger than Charlotte, we perceive Julia must mean Elizabeth Brontë, born, like Emily, in July. We almost had forgotten this sister was at the Clergy Daughters' School. One of two things was responsible, it seems, for the choice of "Julia": either her natal month or her going to the above school in July. Elizabeth Brontë, the second sister of Charlotte Brontë, was born at Hartshead, near Dewsbury.

Thus from this discovery the world learns for the first time that Diana Rivers represents Emily Brontë, afterwards Shirley Keeldar;[44] Mary Rivers, Annie or Anne Brontë; St. John Eyre Rivers, the Rev. Patrick Brontë; and the elderly Hannah, the old, dialect-speaking Tabitha Aykroyd—the original of Charlotte Brontë's Mrs. Dean and Bessie; that Aunt Reed represents Aunt Branwell; Cousin Eliza Reed, Cousin Eliza Branwell; John Reed, Charlotte Brontë's brother Branwell; and Julia Severn, her sister Elizabeth Brontë, all of whom but for The Key to the Brontë Works would have remained for ever hidden and unrecognized in Jane Eyre.

I have refrained from extending this volume with full extracts from the Brontë books, once having indicated the place and nature of my references. I must emphasize, however, that in dealing with the Rivers family Charlotte Brontë gives most appealing portrayals of the various phases of the life at Haworth Parsonage:—The studying, the painting,[45] the minor interesting domestic incidents dear to her memory, the parting of the Brontë sisters with St. John (Mr. Brontë), the "house-cleaning"—so very "Yorkshire"!—the preparations for Christmas, the return home of the Brontë girls, and many other facts and associations that render Jane Eyre in the light of The Key to the Brontë Works the surpassing of all Brontë biographies. Presented for posterity by her own sure hand, Charlotte Brontë's picture is bright and exhilarating; and as we glance uneasily again to Mrs. Gaskell's sombre portrayal, we on a sudden remember that biographer wrote in the shadow of death. But it is with life we have to do.

CHAPTER IX.

M. Héger, Miss Brontë's Brussels friend, by the showing of all evidence was essentially the original of her leading male characters.[46] M. Sue's Miss Mary and its "Manuscript of Mdlle. Lagrange," which I present farther on, are sufficient testimony that M. Héger was the original of the inner Heathcliffe and Rochester, and Charlotte Brontë's other chief male characters. An inquiry, therefore, is at once required as to the significance of Mrs. Gaskell's statement that she suspected Charlotte Brontë drew from the sons of the Taylor family[47] "all that was of truth in the characters of the heroes of her first two works." That the Yorkshire element of her heroes was provided by a living model or models from one family, is proved by a consistency of the characterization in this regard. I find, truly enough, that male members of the Taylor family were indeed the originals to which she referred in the composition of a Yorkshire-Héger.[48] The Taylors, of the Red House, Gomersall, (obviously the Briarmains of the Yorkes), and of Hunsworth, were mill-owner friends, and Independents, with whom Charlotte Brontë visited. In Shirley Miss Brontë ostensibly portrayed Mr. Taylor and his two daughters, her friends Mary and Martha, as Mr. Yorke and Rose and Jessie. Mary and Martha Taylor were at school with Charlotte at Roe Head, near Dewsbury and Huddersfield. They were also at Brussels with Charlotte, though not at the Hégers'. Martha was taken ill and died at Brussels; a touching reference to her death is made where she is portrayed as Jessie Yorke, in Shirley, Chapter XXIII. Mary Taylor (Rose Yorke) was in New Zealand when Charlotte Brontë died. Her fondness for travel is mentioned in the Shirley chapter named. The male members of this family were thought by Currer Bell most characteristic Yorkshire folk, hence the name of Yorke. I mention Yorke Hunsden as one of the Yorkshire-Hégers of Miss Brontë's method of dual portraiture. I believe this important character in The Professor will be found, like his fellows, to be entirely a Taylor-Héger. The name for Hunsden was apparently dictated by the Taylors' connection with Hunsworth, and it may be noted his Christian name of Yorke came to be later the surname of Mr. Taylor as portrayed in Shirley.

But the Héger element was always superior to the Yorkshire element in Charlotte Brontë's heroes. The latter might provide useful and necessary external characteristics, but the "intensitives" were the lines she drew from her model, M. Héger. Of him as M. Pelet in The Professor, she writes:—

This "melancholy almost suffering expression of countenance" she thus described was evidently once a marked characteristic of M. Héger's physiognomy. A reference to it occurs in M. Sue's Miss Mary, in the French and "adapted" version, where we find M. de Morville, whom I identify as a phase of M. Héger, sitting in a reverie:—

Thus, of Yorke Hunsden in The Professor, we read:—

And again of Hunsden, in the same vein:—

Regarding these facial metamorphoses Charlotte Brontë wrote similarly concerning M. Héger.[49]

I remark that M. Héger's harshness evidently had impressed Charlotte Brontë considerably at first, and thus reflects her thoughts on this point in the introduction of the phases she gives of him in her books. So we read of Yorke Hunsden, of Heathcliffe, and of Rochester:—

We read of Rochester:—"The frown, the roughness of the stranger set me at my ease"; and in Villette, we read of M. Héger as M. Paul:—"Once ... I held him harsh and strange, ... the darkness, the manner displeased me. Now ... I preferred him before all humanity," which explains why Charlotte Brontë wrote of Rochester:—"The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish," and explains why she admits to the piquancy in exploiting the possibilities of Heathcliffe's startling harshness.

And again, as further evidence of the influence of M. Héger over her Yorkshire Hunsden, we find this character in the close of The Professor implicated with a mysterious "Lucia," whom he would have married but could not, which Lucia we discover to have meant really the original of the Lucy Snowe of Villette—Charlotte Brontë herself.

It is obvious that while Currer Bell, for "story" and other purposes, made use of a composite method in presenting a portrait, she drew from characters who possessed much in common: as with the composite character of the Rev. Mr. Helstone, meant for her father, a clergyman, but presenting also a phase of another clergyman, the Rev. Hammond Roberson; and as with Dr. John Bretton, a composite character drawn from the two Scotsmen, Mr. Smith her publisher, and the Rev. A. B. Nicholls, who subsequently became her husband. Doubtless, characteristics in the Taylors were similar to some of M. Héger's. Perhaps the fact that they spoke French and sojourned on the Continent, accentuated to her these characteristics. In a letter, Miss Brontë described all the Taylors as "Republicans." And so of Yorke Hunsden in The Professor, Chap. XXIV., we read, "republican, lord-hater, as he was, Hunsden was proud of his old ——shire blood ... and family standing." Thus, in Shirley, Chap. IV., in which work that character appears stripped of the Héger element, as Mr. Yorke, we read of the latter:—