The Life of Charlotte Bronte (77 page)

7
(p. 275)
“I can understand admiration of George Sand”:
The French writer George Sand (1804—1876) is celebrated as much today for her bohemian lifestyle and cross-dressing as for her prolific literary output as novelist, dramatist, correspondent, memoirist, and political tract writer. “My profession is to be free,” she once declared.

8
(p. 278) “beyond anything due to a Bulwer or D’Israeli production”: Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) and Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) were politicians, novelists, and friends. Bulwer-Lytton’s sensationalistic bent made him one of the most popular writers of his day. Disraeli, who twice served as prime minister, wrote “condition of England” novels treating social issues. In suggesting that Lewes’s novel deserves more acclaim than a Bulwer or Disraeli production, Brontë is perhaps offering faint praise.

9
(p. 278)
water-supply to each house:
Patrick Brontë campaigned the Board of Health in London for more than a decade for a clean water supply and improved sanitary conditions for Haworth. Although an inspector finally arrived in 1849 and advocated, among other measures, immediately closing the graveyard, Haworth did not receive a piped water supply until 1858. (See Barker, The Brontës, p. 814.)

10
(p. 279)
“That England may be spared the
spasms... I earnestly
pray”:
Brontë fears that the working-class Chartist movement (1838-1848), which called for universal male suffrage and abolition of property qualifications for members of Parliament, would unleash a revolution in England like those that had been spreading on the Continent.

11
(p. 286) Chatterton: The poet Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), too avant-garde to be appreciated in his day, committed suicide at age seventeen. He later became an idol to the Romantics and Pre-Raphaelites.

1
(p. 296)
“Quarterly Review” of December,
1848: Elizabeth Rigby’s anonymous review of Jane Eyre appeared this month (see endnote 3 to volume II, chapter II).

2
(p. 297) “lama sabachthoni,”—still,
even then let him
pray...
than judge with the Pharisee:
Gaskell’s defense of Brontë overdramatically culminates in Christ’s appeal on the cross: “Why hast thou forsaken me?” (See the King James Version of the Bible, Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46.) For the parable of the publican and the Pharisee, see Luke 18:10-14.

3
(p. 308)
following account of the
journey—and
of the end:
Ellen Nussey provided this eyewitness account of Anne Brontë’s death, albeit written in retrospect for Gaskell, who edited it.

1
(p. 315) “three curates”: Two were based on Patrick Brontë’s former curates, James William Smith and Joseph Brett Grant, and the last on a curate of a neighboring parish. Brontë’s contempt for curates as a class is registered in a letter to Ellen Nussey: “At this blessed moment we have no less than three of them in Haworth-Parish—and God knows there is not one to mend another” (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, June [18?], 1845; in
The Letters of Charlotte
Brontë, vol. 1, p. 399).

2
(p. 320) Mr. Hall: William Margetson Heald, the vicar of Ellen Nussey’s parish, believed that either he or his father was the model for this character (William Heald to Nussey, January 8, 1850; in Wise and Symington, vol. 3, p. 63).

3
(p. 324)
mortified her far more than actual blame:
Interestingly, the criticisms Lewes offers are not of the kind Gaskell enumerates here. Far from lowering the standard, he claims to raise the bar by taking Brontë to task for stepping ”“out of her sex—without elevating herself above it.” [G. H. Lewes],
Edinburgh Review
91, January 1850.

4
(p. 324)
She often
writes...
the
following...
letters to
Cornhill
: The following letter is to James Taylor (November 6, 1849; in
The Letters of Charlotte
Brontë, vol. 2, pp. 280-281). Gaskell suppresses Taylor’s name as correspondent here and throughout presumably because she wants to deflect the suggestion that Brontë invited his marriage proposal. Brontë continued to correspond with Taylor after she rejected his suit and he left England to head Smith, Elder’s India office.

5
(p. 325) “
I
send you
a
couple of reviews:”
The reviews are: [A. W Fonblanque],
Examiner,
November 3, 1849. and [W H. Howitt],
Standard of Freedom,
November 10, 1849 (see Allot, pp. 125-129, 133-135).

6
(p. 328)
Miss
Martineau: The versatile writer and thinker Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) addressed a wide range of subjects including women’s education, religion, and political economy. Her novel
Deerbrook
(1839) influenced Brontë.

7
(p. 329)
in came
a
young-looking lady, almost child-like in stature
: In her
Autobiography
(3 vols., London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1877), Martineau describes Brontë as “the smallest creature I had ever seen (except at a fair)” (vol. 2, p. 326).

1
(pp. 332-333)
“friends have sent me books
lately...
‘Nemesis of
Faith’ ”:
The books mentioned are Harriet Martineau’s Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848), Francis Newman’s
The Soul, Its Sorrows and Its Aspirations
(1849), and James Froude’s
The Nemesis of Faith
(1849).

2
(p. 333) “Mr.—.. Mr. R—... John—s wife”: Both Mr.—and Mr. R—are references to Arthur Bell Nicholls, Brontë’s future husband, on whom the one flattering portrait of a curate in Shirley is based. Brontë tells Nussey in another part of this letter that Nicholls “triumphed in his own character.” The wife of John Brown, the Haworth sexton, was Nicholls’s landlady.

3
(p. 333) “When they got the volumes at the Mechanics’ Institute”: Mechanics Institutes were cultural centers established for the use of the working classes. The one in Keighley hosted concerts, lectures, and classes, and offered a circulating library that the Brontës could use. Brontë refers in this letter to the Haworth Mechanics Institute, which was founded in 1849 with support from Brontë and her father.

4
(p. 337) “Nella Miseria—”: From Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, canto 5, lines 121-123, which reads in full: “There is no greater grief than remembering happy times in misery” (my translation).

5
(p. 338)
Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth:
James Kay Shuttleworth was a philanthropist and social reformer who was knighted for his services. Trained as a medical doctor, he worked to improve sanitary conditions among the poor and working classes in order to combat disease. He was also an early champion of national education. Sir James’s avocation was entertaining celebrated authors. It was at his estate near Windermere that Gaskell and Brontë met.

6
(p. 340) “Unprotected Female’ ”: The “Unprotected Female” was a series of sketches that appeared in the periodical Punch (founded in 1841) from 1849 to 1850.
Punch,
established by social reformer Henry May-hew (1812-1887) and journalists Joseph Stirling Coyne and Mark Lemon, blended political commentary and humorous cartoons.

7
(p. 341)
“that, too, I read, and with unalloyed pleasure”:
The most recent collection of essays by William Hazlitt would have been
Winterslow:
Essays and Characters Written There
(1850). The other titles are Charles Cuthbert Southey’s edition of
The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
(1849-1850); Julia Kavanagh,
Woman in France During the Eighteenth Century
(1850); Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Representative Men: Seven
Lectures (1850); and A. J. Scott,
Suggestions on Female Education
(1849).

1
(p. 344) “I
had thought to bring
the ‘Leader’:
The Leader
(1850) was a radical literary periodical founded by G. H. Lewes.

2
(p. 347)
to join the friends with whom she had been staying in town:
Gaskell skims over the unorthodox nature of Brontë’s trip to Scotland with George Smith, an unmarried man, and his sister. Both Smith’s mother and Ellen Nussey urged against it. Brontë reassures Ellen: “My six or eight years of seniority not to say nothing of lack of all pretension to beauty &c. are a perfect safeguard—I should not in the least fear to go with him to China” (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, June 20, 1850; in
The Letters of Charlotte
Brontë, vol. 2, p. 419).

3
(p. 349) “Papa
had worked himself up to
a
sad
pitch...
obviously joining him”:
The letter continues: “I can’t deny but I was annoyed.... Papa’s great discomposure had its origin in ... the vague fear of my being somehow about to be married to somebody.” In editing out this portion of the letter Gaskell suppresses Patrick’s fear that Brontë and George Smith had formed a romantic attachment.

1
(p. 352)
I shall probably convey my first
impressions... a
longer description:
The text that follows is extracted from two of Gaskell’s letters. One is to Catherine Winkworth, on August 25, 1850, and another, written on the same date, is to an unknown correspondent.

2
(p. 353)
“liking ‘Modern
Painters’...
Father Newman’s Lectures”:
John Ruskin (1819-1900) wrote
Modern Painters
(1843-1860) and The
Seven Lamps of Architecture
(1849). Father Newman, later a cardinal, is John Henry Newman (1801-1890), a leader of the Oxford Movement within the Anglican Church. He later converted to Roman Catholicism.

3
(p. 353)
“invitation to drink
tea
quietly
at
Fox How”:
Fox How was the home of the widow and children of Dr. Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), moralist, social reformer and educational theorist. The curricular innovations Arnold instituted as headmaster of Rugby School influenced the course of British education. He was the father of poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822-1888).

4
(p. 356)
‘Westminster Review’:
The
Westminster Review
was a reform-minded periodical acquired by John Stuart Mill in 1836.

5
(p. 357)
“I have read Tennyson’s ‘In
Memoriam’ ”
: On Gaskell’s recommendation Brontë read, or rather, attempted to read Alfred Tennyson’s In
Memoriam
(1850), an elegy to his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Presumably to educate her new friend in her own aesthetic preferences, Brontë sends Gaskell the final edition of Wordsworth’s autobiographical
The Prelude,
which was published posthumously in 1850.

6
(p. 359)
“I should be glad if you would
include... ‘Life of Dr. Arnold’”: Brontë wanted to read Arthur Penrhyn Stanley’s Life and
Correspondence of Thomas
Arnold (1844).

1
(p. 360)
task of editing them:
Brontë wrote a “Biographical Notice” of her sisters for this edition, published by Smith, Elder and Company, and she appended a heavily edited selection of their poetry.

2
(p. 361)
That gentleman
says:—: G. H. Lewes, writing to George Smith. Gaskell wanted input from Lewes but, unlike Brontë, would not correspond with him directly because of his reputed immorality
(The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell,
letter 314). In 1854 he dissolved his open marriage to live with writer George Eliot.

3
(p. 362)
“I lent her some of Balzac’s and George Sand’s novels”:
The novels of Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) that G. H. Lewes is talking about are
Modeste Mignon
(1844) and
Illusions Perdues
(1837-1843). Gaskell is quick to give anecdotal evidence of Brontë’s “disgust” for Balzac, who was not considered proper reading for a lady. George Sand’s Lettres d’un
Voyageur (Letters of
a
Traveler),
part autobiography, part travel narrative, appeared in 1837.

4
(p. 366) “ ‘The Roman’ ”:
The Roman
(1850) was a poem by Sydney Dobell, the critic who had endeared himself to Brontë with his praise of Wuthering
Heights.

1
(p. 372)
“You
ask
me whether Miss Martineau made me convert to mesmerism”:
Mesmerism, a form of hypnotism thought to cure disease, was first practiced by Franz Mesmer (1734-1815), a Viennese physician. Harriet Martineau was a believer.

2
(p. 373)
Your account of
Mr. A—
”: Henry Atkinson and Martineau coauthored
Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development
(1851).

3
(p. 377)
great Exhibition:
The Great Exhibition of 1851, held at the Crystal Palace in London, was an international industrial show intendedto showcase British ascendancy. Brontë visited it five tim“under coercion.” On a subsequent trip to London, Brontë made her own itinerary and “selected the
real
in preference to the decorative side of life” (see the Introduction).

4
(p. 386) “‘Phrenological Character’” : Phrenology was a pseudo-science in which a person’s character was analyzed by examining his or her skull structure. Brontë and George Smith posed as brother and sister and had a phrenological reading done by a physician in London. See Gérin, Appendix B, for his report.

1
(p. 389)
“I have read the ‘Saint’s
Tragedy’ ”:
Brontë is referring to The Saint’s
Tragedy: or, The True Story of Elizabeth of Hungary
(1848) , by Charles Kingsley (1819-1875).

2
(p. 391)
“James Martineau’s sermons”:
James Martineau (1805-1900), brother of Harriet Martineau, was a Unitarian minister and moral philosopher.