The Key to the Brontë Works. John Malham-Dembleby
later, the names employed by Charlotte Brontë being River(s), Burn(s), Aire or Eyre, Severn, Reed, and Keeldar.
Another of Montagu's personal contributions which greatly influenced Charlotte Brontë was on the leaf before the mention of John Bell, Esq., and on the same leaf as the mention of Casterton Hall, headed "A Night's Repose." This was the narration of a night's adventure, Montagu telling how he went to a lonely hostelry and found an unwillingness in the hostess to give him bed and shelter. He also discovered a mystery surrounded the hostess and a peculiar, harsh-voiced country-bred man-servant—who came to be the original of Joseph of Wuthering Heights. At night the apparition of the hostess appears at Montagu's bedside, white-faced and lighted candle in hand. It is plain the peculiar man-servant appealed very strongly to Charlotte Brontë, and thus in both her Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre transcriptions of the midnight incident this characteristic is marked and recognizable: in Joseph; and in Grace Poole, by what I have termed Charlotte Brontë's Method I., interchange of the sexes of characters. In Wuthering Heights, by her same Method I., Montagu's inhospitable hostess became the inhospitable host Heathcliffe; but in each of Charlotte Brontë's versions—Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre—a central figure of the incidents she based upon Montagu's story of "A Night's Repose" was the uncouth, coarse-voiced country-bred servant.
We also shall see that Montagu's reference to lunacy being an exception to his objection against the separation of husband and wife, and the use he made of a verse in his Malham letter, likening the moon to
"A … lady lean and pale
Who totters forth wrapt in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,"
were responsible for the "plot" of Jane Eyre including an insane lady who wanders out of her chamber at night and dons a vapoury veil.
And evidence of the enthusiasm with which Charlotte Brontë applied herself to Jane Eyre is the fact that she at once took from Montagu's little volume for this her second story based upon the book's suggestions, the names of
Broughton, Poole (from Pooley), Eshton, Georgiana, Lynn (from Linton), Lowood (from Low-wood), Mason, Ingram, Helen,[16] and possibly Millcote (from Weathercote).
Thus far we see Charlotte Brontë drew Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre from the same source; that in a word, Jane Eyre, was Charlotte's second attempt to utilize and amplify the suggestions in Montagu's work which had appealed to her when she began Wuthering Heights, and we see the suggestions she utilized in Jane Eyre always bear unmistakable relationship to those she had utilized in her Wuthering Heights. But the use Charlotte Brontë made of Montagu's book was not in the nature of literary theft; that volume simply afforded suggestions which she enlarged upon.
I shall presently show how I find Jane Eyre is the second attempt of Currer Bell to enlarge upon suggestions that had appealed to her when she first read Montagu. For a commencement I will refer to the early construction of her Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. As simple stories they both are based upon the description Montagu gives of an isolated hostelry with an inhospitable hostess, a midnight apparition, and an air of mystery that surrounds the hostess and a peculiar, uncouth servant, to whom I have already alluded. The stage properties of this narrative, the characters, and the "action" or plot, I will give side by side, as they appear severally, first in Montagu, next in Wuthering Heights, and finally in Jane Eyre. Herewith the reader will have excellent examples of the two chief methods I find Charlotte Brontë employed often when she drew from a character in more than one work or instance, or when she desired to veil the identity of her originals. Charlotte Brontë's Methods I. and II., being discovered equally in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre show, as conclusively as any other evidence, that she was the author of both works. No consideration whatsoever can alter the iron fact or depreciate from its significance, that it was absolutely my discovery of Charlotte Brontë's Methods I. and II., which revealed to me the sensational verbal and other parallels between Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre I give in The Key to the Brontë Works:—
Read carefully:—
Charlotte Brontë's Method I.—The interchange of sexes. Thus the original of A may be a woman, and the original of B a man; but A may be represented as a man, and B as a woman.
Charlotte Brontë's Method II.—Altering the age of a character portrayed. Thus the original of C may be young, and the original of D old; but C may be represented as old, and D as young.
The literal extracts to which I have referred I print as occurring in the three works:—Montagu the original, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre. I will first give the substance, or subject matter, side by side:—
| Montagu. | Wuthering Heights. | Jane Eyre. |
| Montagu goes on horseback to a solitary house at a distance from any habitable dwelling, alone, and seeks a night's repose. But though comfort is all around, he finds an air of mystery surrounds the inhospitable hostess and her deep-voiced, Yorkshire dialect-speaking, country-bred man-servant. | Lockwood, of whom Montagu was palpably the original, goes on horseback to a solitary house at a distance from any habitable dwelling, alone, and seeks a night's repose. But he finds an air of mystery surrounds the inhospitable host (Charlotte Brontë's Method I., interchange of the sexes) and his harsh-voiced, Yorkshire dialect-speaking, country-bred man-servant. | Jane (Method I., interchange of the sexes) goes to a solitary house, alone. Comfort is all around, but an air of mystery surrounds the master's wife and a peculiar harsh-voiced female servant (Method I., interchange of the sexes). |
| Montagu is shown to bed up a step-ladder that leads through a trap, and sleeps only fitfully, dreaming. He hears noises and perceives a gleam of light He starts to find the white-faced apparition of his hostess standing at his bedside, lighted candle in hand, her features convulsed with diabolical rage. The deep-voiced, Yorkshire dialect-speaking peculiar man-servant he sees by looking down the step-ladder through the trap. | Lockwood is shown to bed, and sleeps only fitfully, dreaming. He hears noises and perceives a gleam of light. He starts to find the white-faced apparition of his host standing at his bedside, lighted candle in hand, his features convulsed with diabolical rage. The harsh-voiced, Yorkshire dialect-speaking man-servant, a sour old man (Charlotte Brontë's Method II., the altering of the age of a character portrayed), comes down a step-ladder that vanished through a trap. | Jane, in bed one night, sleeps only fitfully, dreaming. She hears noises and perceives a gleam of light. She starts to find the apparition of her master's wife standing at her bedside, lighted candle in hand, her features convulsed with diabolical rage. The harsh-voiced, peculiar female servant Jane first encountered after having gone to the attics and through a trap-door to the roof. |
In the literal extracts I now give the reader will perceive that in the description of the bedside, candle-bearing apparition in Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë followed Montagu almost word for word, and in the whole staging of the midnight episode at the house of the inhospitable host in Wuthering Heights followed him entirely in outlining the story. Both the Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre versions give unequivocal evidence of being refractions from Montagu conveyed through one brain alone, the peculiar idiosyncrasy and elective sensitiveness of which are undeniably recognizable as Charlotte Brontë's:—
| Montagu. | Wuthering Heights. | Jane Eyre. |
| A Night's Repose. | A Night's Repose. | A Night's Repose. |
| My servant having lamed his steed … I arrived alone at a small hostelry in a secluded part of the country, and apparently at some distance from any habitable dwelling. Having determined to rest for the night, I discovered in the woman who seemed to be the hostess an anxiety to get rid of me; but with the usual obstinacy of curiosity caused by this apparent anxiety, I determined not to be thwarted; so, putting up my horse, I entered the house, and sat down to a humble but substantial meal, prepared during my absence in the stable; and though comfort had sway with all around me, yet there was an evident air of profound mystery between my hostess and her boy-of-all-work, a thick-set son of the |