The Key to the Brontë Works. John Malham-Dembleby
A RAINY DAY IN CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S CHILDHOOD: THE OPENING INCIDENT IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF THE HEROINES OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AND "JANE EYRE."
Seeing Catherine Earnshaw, the heroine of Wuthering Heights, was drawn, as I find, by Charlotte Brontë for her autobiographical self, the real commencement of that work, in so far as personal narrative was concerned, is the diary extract she wrote of herself in her earliest childhood.[18] In Jane Eyre she placed her earliest childhood memories at the beginning of the story. I will give extracts side by side, when it will be seen they agree practically word for word. It is of course undeniable that none but Charlotte Brontë herself would or could have penned these incidents of her own childhood.
| Wuthering Heights. | Jane Eyre. |
| Chapter III. | Chapter I. |
| A rainy day in the early childhood of Catherine Earnshaw, as told by herself. | A rainy day in the early childhood of Jane Eyre, as told by herself. |
| ———— | ———— |
| … All day had been flooding with rain; we could not go to church. | There was no possibility of taking a walk that day, … the cold winter wind had brought with it a rain so penetrating that further outdoor exercise was out of the question. |
| Hindley [Branwell Brontë] and his wife [? Sister Maria] basked downstairs before a comfortable fire. | Eliza, John [Branwell Brontë], and Georgiana were now clustered round their mamma [Aunt Branwell] in the drawing-room … by the fireside … looking perfectly happy. |
| Heathcliffe [Method I., interchange of the sexes. In the childhood of Heathcliffe Charlotte often portrays herself], myself, and the … ploughboy were commanded to take our prayer-books and mount … on a sack … [in the garret. They go downstairs again]. "You forget you have a master in me," says the tyrant [Hindley: Branwell Brontë].… We made ourselves … snug … in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph.[19] … He tears down my handiwork [the curtain], boxes my ears, and … thrust [a book] upon us. … I took my … volume … and hurled it into the dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book. | Me she had dispensed from joining the group. … A small breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room; I slipped in there, … I possessed myself of a volume, … I mounted into the window-seat, … and having drawn the … curtain nearly close, I was shrined in … retirement. … With … [a book] on my knee I was … happy; … but interruption … came too soon. The … door opened: "Boh!" cried the voice of John Reed [Branwell Brontë]. "It is well I drew the curtain," thought I, … but Eliza … said: "She is in the window-seat, … Jack [Branwell]." |
| Hindley [Branwell Brontë] hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing … us … hurled both into the back-kitchen. | I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Jack [Branwell Brontë]. "What were you doing behind the curtain?" he asked. "I'll teach you to rummage my bookshelves, for they are mine; all the house belongs to me, or soon will do. … Go … by the door." I did so, … but … I saw him lift the book and stand in the act to hurl it. … The volume was flung. … He ran … at me. … I saw in him a tyrant. … Then Mrs. Reed [Aunt Branwell] subjoined: "Take her to the red-room." … |
| … How little did I dream that Hindley [Branwell Brontë] would ever make me cry so. … My head aches, till I cannot keep it on the pillow; and still I can't give over. | … All John Reed's [Branwell Brontë's] violent tyrannies … turned in my disturbed mind. … My head still ached … no one reproved John [Branwell]. … How all my brain was in tumult. … I could not answer the question why I thus suffered; now at the distance of—I will not say how many years—I see it clearly. |
Thus we see the "volume-hurling" incident with which John Reed is associated had its origin in some incident connected with Charlotte Brontë's childhood and her brother Branwell. As Catherine, Charlotte Brontë calls Hindley "a tyrant" in this connection, and as Jane Eyre she calls John Reed "a tyrant" here. Branwell, as John Reed, is made to tell Jane in connection with this incident that "all this house belongs to me, or will do"; and as Hindley Earnshaw he tells his sister Catherine, "You forget you have a master here." By Charlotte Brontë's Method II., altering the age of a character portrayed, Branwell is represented in the Wuthering Heights scene as a man in years. Without further appeal it was likely enough that Hindley Earnshaw, Catherine's brother, was drawn for Charlotte Brontë's brother, seeing Catherine was Charlotte. Herewith we find an explanation for a fact Mr. Francis A. Leyland has strongly emphasized in his work The Brontë Family, that in Wuthering Heights incidents (the carving-knife incident, etc.) and epithets known by his intimates to have been common to Branwell Brontë are associated with Hindley Earnshaw in the days of his moral deterioration. That deterioration is reflected in the portrayal of the latter end of John Reed in Jane Eyre; in Wuthering Heights it is given in detail. As for Emily Brontë, she always liked and commiserated with Branwell Brontë.[20]
I hope the attempt to interfere with this tradition recently has no relation to the fact that I briefly stated in my Fortnightly Review article that John Reed and Hindley Earnshaw were one and the same. It is plain to see that if Emily really liked Branwell, as people stated who gleaned from hearsay, she could not have portrayed him as Hindley Earnshaw. But a wrong estimate of the nature of the evidence I promised to bring has been formed if it were thought I should base my book upon such a point. It is enough that Charlotte Brontë's private letters regarding Branwell are quite in agreement with her own harsh portrayals of him in her Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
It is interesting to recall Branwell avowed he, and not Emily, wrote Wuthering Heights. This fact and the association of Branwell Brontë incidents and epithets with the book induced Mr. Leyland to advocate Branwell's authorship. The Key to the Brontë Works shows the absurdness of such a claim. Mr. Leyland suggested Branwell may have collaborated with Emily; and he professed to discover a break in the style. I find, however, that though there were violent psychical fluctuations in the mood of the writer of Wuthering Heights, the book is throughout the work of Charlotte Brontë. This may be proved alone by the Chapter III., with which I now deal: it is the "key" chapter, and is, so to speak, a microcosm of Wuthering Heights, as the reader will perceive by help of my index. Whosoever was the writer of this third chapter wrote the whole of Wuthering Heights, and we see it was Currer Bell.
By Charlotte Brontë's Method I., interchange of the sexes, the interloper Jane in the early chapters of Jane Eyre and the interloper Heathcliffe in the early chapters of Wuthering Heights become one and the same; and Hindley's tyrannizing over Heathcliffe is John Reed's (Branwell Brontë's) tyrannizing over Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë). Again, by Method I., interchange of the sexes, old Joseph, in Charlotte's Wuthering Heights version of the rainy day incident in her childhood, serves the part of the servant Tabitha Aykroyd, for whom Bessie in the Jane Eyre version of the rainy day incident was drawn. (See "Joseph" and his bit of garden, Wuthering Heights, Chapter XXXIII.; also my footnote on page 47.) Thus Charlotte Brontë as Catherine tells us that when she was banished from the comfortable fire "Joseph" sermonizes, and that she hoped he might give "a short homily for his own sake"; and in the scene in Jane Eyre drawn from the same incident Jane was left to Bessie, who "supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour's length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof."
Catherine's story of the rainy day in Wuthering Heights was written by her in childhood on "a 'red-hot' Methodist's tract." Hence it is interesting to read Charlotte Brontë's words in Villette, where as Lucy Snowe she says she had "once read when a child certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts seasoned with … excitation to fanaticism." As Caroline Helstone[21] in Shirley, Charlotte tells us she had read "some mad Methodist magazines, full of miracles and apparitions, of preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticism; … from these faded flowers Caroline had in her childhood extracted the honey—they were tasteless to her now." Let the reader compare Charlotte Brontë's reference to Briar Chapel and the shouts, yells, ejaculations,