30 July: Boreham on Emily Bronte

The Bravest of the Brontes
On July 30, 1818, Emily Bronte was born. Thirty years later, she died of consumption, cherishing no suspicion of the honours that coming generations were to weave about her name. She had written a novel, "Wuthering Heights." Mr. H. W. Garrod says that, if this novel cannot be called the greatest in our language, it can at least claim to be the most purely inspired. Yet neither "Wuthering Heights" nor any other romance furnishes us with a story as thrilling and as touching as the actual life story of Emily Bronte herself. It is one of the most amazing records of courage and achievement that our annals can produce. Of the three famous sisters, she was the most electric, the most passionate, and the most intense. Although she spent most of her time coughing, and was obviously under sentence of death, she stands as one of the most carefree and daredevil figures in the republic of English letters.

In those dark days in which everything was going tragically in the old rectory at Haworth, it was Emily's dauntless courage that held the household together. The mother and two children already slept in the tomb beneath the aisle of the little church; the father was rapidly becoming blind; the only son reduced the place to a state of pandemonium by his wild and dissolute outbursts; and the three girls worked day and night at manuscripts which, they had too much reason to fear, were never likely to be published. And, all the while, they were racked by a pitiless disease that eventually dragged them all down to early graves. But Emily's stout heart never wavered. The picture left upon the mind after reading the numerous sketches of her is the impression of a vivacious, laughing, unconquerable girl racing across the moors with Keeper, her big bulldog, at her heels; delighting in the fresh air and the wild winds and the dark nights; and, when at home, compelling her sisters to frolic and to dance with her when they were in no mood for frivolities.

Is The Book Out Of Keeping With Its Writer?
Known as "The Major," Emily was always resourceful, quick-witted, self-reliant. A strange dog bites her; and she says not a word, but, slipping away to the kitchen, thrusts a skewer into the fire, waits until it is white hot, and then, with one untrembling hand, cauterises the bleeding tooth wounds on the other. Discovering, when retiring for the night, that her brother, in a fit of drunkenness, has set the house on fire, she gives no alarm, but works away with pails of water until she has extinguished the last spark, and then, quite unruffled, goes off to bed. The same confident and independent spirit characterises her conduct at every turn.

It affected her literary work. Her sisters, when they finished a manuscript, sent it to Southey or to Coleridge or to Wordsworth, craving their expert opinion. Emily would do nothing of the kind. She kept her folios locked in her own desk until she was ready to post them to the publishers. Emily was mistress of her own mind; she was captain of her own soul. How came so singular a girl to write so terrible a story? Dante Rossetti called it, "a fiend of a book; an incredible monster; its action is laid in hell." The question has been endlessly discussed, and, as a desperate loophole of escape from the mystery, it has been suggested that Branwell, the sinister brother, must have been responsible. Some say that he actually wrote it; some that he wrote the opening chapters and that Emily finished it; some that he told her the story and that she committed it to paper. But is the problem as baffling as these theorists make it?

The Genesis Of A Tragic Romance
In their earlier days the rector delighted in telling the children tales of the wild life of their Irish ancestors. A friend of the family says that the girls used to sit in breathless silence, their prominent eyes starting from their heads, whilst their father unfolded one vivid scene after another. But the greatest effect was produced upon Emily, who seemed to be dead to everything but her father's narrative. The atmosphere was painful in its very tenseness. The outline of "Wuthering Heights" was recited in this way so often that Branwell, in his drunken stupors, used to brag that he himself could have written the novel if Emily hadn't. When "Wuthering Heights" was published, Mr. E. P. Whipple, one of the most trusted critics of his day, said that the book was evidently written by "a man of uncommon talents, but dogged, brutal, and morose." Charlotte read the harsh sentence to Emily, who dying, smiled a wan, brave smile, but said nothing. Not long afterwards, Branwell passed away; and a few weeks later, Emily followed him. Keeper, the ferocious but faithful bulldog, insisted on standing as chief mourner at the foot of the grave.

Keeper had come to the rectory, Mr. Gaskell says, in the vigorous strength of his youth. Sullen and savage, he had met his master in the indomitable Emily. After the fashion of dogs, he feared, respected, and deeply loved the strange, strong creature who had subdued him. On returning from the funeral, he lay down at Emily's door, whining piteously, and refusing to be comforted. He lived for exactly three years afterwards, and died just as the health of Charlotte, the last of the three famous sisters, was beginning to fail. Charlotte felt a special grief in burying the bulldog. It was her last point of contact with Emily; the animal had seemed a living embodiment of his mistress' dauntless spirit. "I have never seen her parallel in anything," Charlotte exclaimed. "Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone." Matthew Arnold said of her that, for passion, vehemence, sorrow, and daring, she ranked with Byron, and that the two made an incomparable pair. She had no inkling that her work would be immortal, and, partly because this gratification was denied her, posterity, reading her masterpiece with unstinted admiration, will cherish her name with a tenderness that almost amounts to personal devotion.

F W Boreham

Image: Emily Bronte