CHARLOTTE BRONTË’S THUNDER
The Truth Behind the Brontë Genius
By Michele Carter
Published by Boomer Publications Inc. at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 by Michele Carter
ISBN 978-0-9682728-3-1
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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1. Biography. 2. Charlotte Brontë. 3. The Brontë Sisters. 4. Freemasonry.
5. Nineteenth Century Women Writers. 6. Yorkshire, England.
This book is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes and is designed to explore one specific theory regarding the authorship of the Brontë works. The resulting narrative tries to introduce the biographical and historical facts together with an analysis of the Brontë writings to assess the viability of this theory. Without absolute proof, however, the assumptions are necessarily based on limited knowledge. Nonetheless, the speculations and the possibilities warrant disclosure.
Book One: HAWORTH VILLAGE--Chapters. 1 2 3 4;
Book Two: UNBRIDLED IMAGINATIONS--Chapters 5 6 7 8;
Book Three: FREEMASONRY and JANE EYRE--Chapters 9 10 11;
Book Four: A STUDENT OF FREEMASONRY WRITES WUTHERING HEIGHTS--
Chapters 12 13 14 15 16 17 18;
Book Five: CHARLOTTE’S EARLY ANAGRAMS--Chapters 19 20 21 22 23 24;
Book Six: EXECUTORS AND WILLS--Chapters 25 26 27;
Book Seven: THE STORY BEHIND THREE NOVELS and A POEM--Chapters 28 29 30 31 32;
Book Eight: A TRINITY OF NOVELS--Chapters 33 34 35 36;
Book Nine: BRANWELL’S LEGACY and A MALE PERSONA--Chapters 37 38 39;
Book Ten: HEGER, SMITH, or NICHOLLS?--Chapters 40 41 42 43 44 45;
Click on either the ‘Book’ or Chapter Headings to return to the Table of Contents.
Appendices: Appendix ‘A’ Appendix ‘B’ Appendix ‘C’ Appendix ‘D’ Appendix ‘E’ Appendix ‘F’
Recognize what is before your eyes,
and what is hidden will be revealed to you.
--The Gospel of Thomas
The three Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, and one brother, Branwell lived in a vicar’s residence with their father Reverend Brontë in a village in Yorkshire, England during the mid-nineteenth century. In 1846, while Emily and Anne were still in their twenties and Charlotte was just 30, the three Brontë sisters self-published, under the male pseudonyms of Currer Bell, Ellis Bell, and Acton Bell, a book of poetry entitled Poems, which sold only two copies. In 1845, their brother Branwell had begun a novel that remained unfinished at his death in 1848, but between 1841 and 1848 he published approximately 18 poems in various newspapers in Yorkshire (Oxford 77). In 1847, the ‘Bell brothers’ acquired two separate publishers who handled the publication of Currer Bell’s Jane Eyre, Ellis Bell’s Wuthering Heights, and Acton Bell’s Agnes Grey. Currer Bell’s other fiction The Professor was rejected nine times, but published posthumously two years after Charlotte’s death.
By the end of 1848, Emily had also died, so only two sisters remained with their father in the parsonage. In 1849, Acton Bell’s novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Currer Bell’s new fiction Shirley were accepted and published. By mid-1849, the youngest sibling Anne had died. The final Currer Bell novel Villette, which was also the last ‘Bell brother’ book, came out in 1853. During this time, two years before her death, Charlotte started ‘The Story of Willie Ellin,’ and an unfinished novel called ‘Emma.’ Collectively, the three Bell brothers had written seven novels, and the response from the public was an interesting one: the readership noted a striking similarity in the subject matter and tone of the novels; some critics went so far as to suggest the ‘brothers’ were one person, Currer Bell, and that, perhaps, he was actually a woman.
Did Charlotte Brontë write all the Brontë sisters’ novels? A few brave souls have entered this controversial territory in the past. Sidney Dobell, a hightly respected, Victorian literary critic read the Brontë novels when they were first published under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. He believed that Currer (Charlotte), not Ellis (Emily), wrote Wuthering Heights due to the similarities he found between it and Jane Eyre, but scholars have dismissed Dobell as “eccentric.” George Saintsbury, another Victorian literary critic, believed Acton Bell (Anne Brontë) had written Wuthering Heights, and he was called “wrong-headed.” According to Lucasta Miller, author of The Brontë Myth, John Malham-Dembleby was “an obsessive enthusiast” who existed on the fringes of a kind of “Brontëmania” that bordered on “pathological:” he, too, believed that Charlotte wrote Wuthering Heights. Miller writes that he “offers an extreme example” of a “conspiracy theorist” when he asserts “that there was nothing in Charlotte’s novels that was not a direct copy from life.” Miller contends that his conclusions begin “with a sane or semi-sane hunch” and then digress into statements that show “he is wholly incapable of distinguishing fact from fiction,”especially when it concerns his “mad views” that Charlotte and Monsieur Heger, her instructor in Brussels, had a love affair that was never consummated, and that Charlotte wrote Wuthering Heights (116).
As Miller states, Malham-Dembleby makes a number of claims that simply cannot be true. In The Confessions of Charlotte Brontë he attributes Branwell’s work to Charlotte and states with absolute certainty that to have given credit to the brother for Charlotte’s work “was one of the most absurdly deluding affectations in the annals of falsely assigned authorship ever known” (2). Scholars admit confusion arises over authorship of some of the Brontë poems, but Malham-Dembleby believes the confusion is groundless, asserting that Charlotte wrote all the poetry and that her sisters merely made fair copies on her behalf. His hyberbole borders on rude when referring to Emily and Anne, but respectful when speaking of Charlotte: Emily was a “simpleton,” and “a slovenly illiterate, with the copyist mentality belonging a dull child of eight, little Charlotte, we shall see, was a cunning mock philologist, a brilliant essayist and satirist, a gifted poet, and a promising young dramatist at thirteen or fouteen” (14). Reproductions of Anne’s poetry “plainly disclose Anne not only as her sister Charlotte’s transcriber, but also as a very childishly illiterate copyist.” Her mentality is inane and simplistic and “failure to recognise this glaring truth can be the result only of absolute unacquaintance with Charlotte’s work, and of a complete ignoring of the redundant evidence of Anne Brontë’s literary ineptitude,” and any assumptions that Anne wrote good poetry are “farcical” (80-81).
His comparison of the Brontë novels for similarity of words and phrases has some merit in a few cases, but his unwavering certainty, rude tone, and dangerous pronouncements that rumours are facts make him an unreliable interpreter of the most persistent Brontë mysteries. The other difficulty with his opinions is that he casts them in a convoluted and opaque syntax. For instance, he believes he has exact matches in real life for the characters in Wuthering Heights and that these were “all sequently transmuted to her novel with such a flagrant indifference to the liberty of simple allocation and patent adaptation, that after the book’s being published Charlotte must have been tortured with a constant terror lest a sensational literary exposure of the extraordinary facts were made before the reading public” (5).
His prose is decidedly tortuous, which makes his claims all the more outrageous but, in the spirit of full disclosure, I also compared two texts that I later discovered he had analyzed, and my conclusions are similar and will be dealt with in chapter thirty.
Elizabeth Rigby in the December 1848 issue of Quarterly Review also recognized a similarity in the Brontë sisters’ work but, at the time of her writing, they were still called the Bell brothers. She suggests that the author of Jane Eyre “combines a total ignorance of the habits of society, a great coarseness of taste, and a heathenish doctrine of religion. And as these characteristics appear more or less in the writings of all three Currer, Acton, and Ellis alike . . . we are ready to accept the fact of their identity or of their relationship with equal satisfaction,” but when comparing Jane Eyre with Wuthering Heights “purporting to be written by Ellis Bell,” she acknowledges “there is a decided family likeness between the two.” Rigby echoes other reviewers when she notes that the Bell brothers seem to write with one sensibility: the books contain “singularly unattractive” protagonists and the writing shares a coarseness and brutality that combines “genuine power with such horrid taste.”
The questions surrounding authorship, therefore, are not new but, as another “conspiracy theorist” that dares to step outside the prescribed view of three genius sisters, I must prepare myself for the derision and ridicule. Will I be classed as dreadfully wayward or simply another crack-brained eccentric? A fear of mockery should not stifle a person’s opinion, however, and until the questions are finally resolved to everyone’s satisfaction--which may never happen--theories should be allowed the light of scrutiny and argument. In my case, I never set out to challenge the status quo, but as I studied the novels for a shared symbolic design, I found an odd set of words that I intuitively surmised might lead into deeper truths. I knew little of the Brontë family--only that there were three sisters--and I knew nothing of Haworth, the village where the family lived for most of their lives. As I read Jane Eyre, I noticed Brontë’s descriptions incorporate religious symbols, and after closer analysis found she was borrowing heavily from the rituals and symbols of Freemasonry. I later discovered she had a brother Branwell who was a Mason, but that was all I knew. The next step in unravelling clues came when I saw that, like the Freemasons, she was using signs and secret codes to construct a separate narrative. Gradually, I blundered through the crests and valleys of the story until I accidentally tripped over the possibility that Charlotte may have been the sole genius in her family. This theory is not absolute proof but, after several years of studying the Brontës, I am convinced of its reliability; thus, I have decided to share my views and risk aligning myself with the wrong-headed and the pathological.
The purpose of this book is not to change hearts and minds, but to offer an alternative reading of Charlotte Brontë. As I unravelled threads to Brontë’s intricate system of code, puns, and clues, I discovered a shocking story of unimagined and diabolical horrors. Through these clues, Brontë unveils examples of criminal activity that either friends or family members must have conveyed to her and, in some cases, she directly experienced. As far as she was concerned, the underlying and constant threat of violence was grounds for anonymity in her writing; she was convinced that these crimes were being committed in her township, and if she were to ever divulge the pattern of these crimes in her novels, she had best cloak herself in the disguise of a male pseudonym. If she were the sole author in the family, she would want to protect her sisters from any negative repercussions following her actions, so in order to guarantee her two sisters enjoyed financial freedom if she died, either naturally or under suspicious circumstances, she would list them as authors; thus, Emily and Anne (now Ellis and Acton) would receive royalties for life. Why not simply name them in her will? As the story emerges, we uncover why Brontë believed a last will and testament would have been the least favoured way to ensure her sisters’ financial security.
The professional surprises uncovered in my research led directly to Brontë’s personal revelations. The biographical and historical facts supported many of these new revelations, but the method of exposing them is certainly open to cynicism and criticism. The newly discovered secret I found in my investigation of her wordplay is that Charlotte Brontë was an avid anagrammatist. She left hundreds among her novels, letters, and poems. In several of the anagrams, she explains that she, not her sister Emily, wrote Wuthering Heights. Brontë’s rules about the anagrams remain consistent: she transforms each ‘surface’ prose phrase in the sentence into a ‘hidden’ anagram phrase; if commas separate the surface phrases, the anagram word is limited to that phrase and cannot be moved to another place within the sentence, but if no commas separate the phrases, an anagram word or two can be shifted to another spot in order to make sense. If a word in the surface prose is enclosed in two commas, it cannot be altered; it stays as is and makes sense when included with the rest of the anagrams.
An example of her skill occurs in the opening sentence of an 1850 disclaimer she wrote after critics suggested she was the sole author of all the writings. The anagrams refer to symbolic terms found in Freemasonry. These elements are covered in chapter nine and in later chapters to show how Brontë uses Masonic rituals and symbols in her fiction. She includes hints of her process in the disclaimer, which reads as follows: “It has been thought that all the works published under the names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, were, in reality, the production of one person.” Currer, Ellis, and Acton were the pen names attributed to Charlotte, Emily, and Anne.
The natural divisions occur between the words “works” and “published,” leaving “in reality” separate because it lies between the two commas, and the last section would be, “were the production of one person.” In this anagram, she omits articles, so without “the” or “a” the sentence has an odd syntax, but the added punctuation helps clarify her message. Also, as mentioned before, when portions of words are not contained within commas, Brontë allows for a word or two to be moved from one place to the next to provide clarity. The completed anagram makes sense with the small shift. First, the completed anagram is written out, followed by each separate phrase to show where the break occurs. The entire anagram with all the adjustments comes at the end. (Noah and wolf are her terms for a Mason.)
Below heath heights’ tort talk, bold Catherine haunts Noah dullard. Fill pen. Use secret numbers. Tiny Ariel. Hood on pen. Now free to recite spur.
These are the splits as explained above. First her surface prose is written out and then the anagram.
“It has been thought that all the works” / Below heath heights’ tort talk haunts.
“published under the names of Currer Ellis and Acton Bell” / Bold Catherine Noah dullard. Fill pen. Use secret numbers.
“in reality” / tiny ariel
“were the production of one person.” / Hood on pen. Now free to recite spur.
She refers to Wuthering Heights and its torts or civil actions, a reference that coincides with the analysis of the novel in its delineation of the law of entail in chapter twenty-seven. As is discussed in chapter eighteen, the anagram in Wuthering Heights of Lockwood’s words “I was over head and ears” could be “I rove as dead Earnshaw.” This “dead Earnshaw” would most likely refer to Catherine’s ghost haunting the dull “Noah” Lockwood. The act of filling a pen with ink would be an accurate term for the activity at that time. The “secret numbers” are the Masonic landmarks that signify the rules of Freemasonry and are discussed later.
Brontë writes in the first person singular with “fill pen” and “use secret numbers,” as in “I fill pen,” and “I use secret numbers,” so she is not describing her sister’s actions, which would need a different subject verb agreement and would read as, “she fills pen;” consequently, Brontë is writing about herself, not her sister. Plus, Charlotte is the small sibling in the family, so her “tiny Ariel” indicates she wrote the book, not Emily who was the tallest sister. This anagram also alludes to the mischievous sprite in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Like the Mason initiate, she wears a hood, but on her pen not her head and, because of her anagram cover, she can freely tell us what motivated her to write the novel with her Masonic symbols and allusions to their rituals and rules.
The next line, with its natural breaks, reads, “This mistake I endeavoured to rectify / by a few words of disclaimer / prefixed to the third edition of Jane Eyre.” The anagrams that fit with the breaks come first but are stilted. The final anagram, with its words repositioned and marked with a number, clarifies the meaning.
“This mistake I endeavoured to rectify” / Inked rude emotive Cathy satire. Foist
“by a few words of disclaimer” / Wry maid. Describe wolf oaf’s
“prefixed to the third edition of Jane Eyre” / profit. Jeer fetid hero. Need identity hoax.
The anagram with the words shifted slightly within the anagram sentence are as follows:
1) Inked rude, emotive Cathy satire. Foist oaf’s profit. Wry maid. Describe wolf. Jeer fetid hero. Need identity hoax.
Chapter twenty-eight provides a complete analysis of this and subsequent anagrams found in her disclaimer. Other chapters show how the anagrams enabled Brontë the freedom to recite all her secrets to her readers.
Together with clues, puns, narratives, and facts, the anagrams provide a glimpse into the real life behind the professional and personal myths, and allow her readers to view the hidden thunder of her denunciations. By transcribing these anagrams and declaring their accuracy, I do not necessarily concede their veracity, but I do accept that Brontë believed she was telling her readers the truth, as she knew it; therefore, I made every effort to support her claims with external evidence. Not everything she states in her anagrams can be proven at this time, so the crimes that she outlines are only alledged crimes and must be viewed as such. Her powerful imagination could have just as easily constructed these tales of apparent brutality, or she may have exaggerated the rumours of corruption to fulfil her creative drive, so readers should try to remember that a number of her claims are her opinion only and not necessarily factually supported. Other claims she makes, however, do coincide with historical facts. In one or two cases, I was not prepared for the uncomfortable truth, and it took some time to absorb the impact of her disclosures, but rather than avoid the controversy surrounding these unusual disclosures, I chose to put these findings in front of Brontë readers to let them decide what is fact or fiction. At the very least, the contents of this book may bring fresh insight into this fascinating family, and introduce Brontë’s novels to a whole new audience.
No book of this kind can be written without citing other scholars, biographers, and historians. Two of the sources that were most invaluable were Juliet Barker’s detailed biography The Brontës. Barker was a curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum and had access to extensive documentation surrounding the entire Brontë family. Her 800-page text was never far from my desk. The three volumes of The Letters of Charlotte Brontë edited by Margaret Smith provided not only Charlotte’s letters but also detailed annotations that made this an equally important research tool. Finally, in some citations I avoided certain symbols that may not be properly transformed through all ebook formats, and I occasionally substituted dashes for commas.
The human heart has hidden treasures
In secret kept, in silence sealed.
--Charlotte Brontë
On a warm afternoon in early autumn, I climbed to the top of the cobbled Main Street in Haworth, observing the serried ranks of shops and homes whose grim stone faces still wear the grey stain of nineteenth century industrial smoke, and I paused at the crest of that steep, winding hill to steady my excitement before turning up the lane that leads to the Brontë parsonage museum.
To my left stood the imposing front entrance to the church of St. Michael’s and all Angels where the Reverend Patrick Brontë began his duties in 1820 as perpetual curate. After following a slight bend in the lane onto Church Street, the famous Brontë home came into view. A few tall trees masked the full glory of the two-story structure, as did a high stone wall that enclosed the grounds. Set between the church and the parsonage was a cemetery with its oblong gravestones and large, stone boxes that resembled forgotten coffins still waiting to be interred. Strips of persistent grass crept along the edges of stone, growing among flattened slabs that designated burials of men, women, and children honoured and loved from centuries long past. To my right was a house built around 1830 by John Brown, a stone mason, church sexton, and friend of the Brontës. Attached to the house is the old school room where Charlotte Brontë had once taught the village boys and girls.
I made my way to the opening in the stone wall and stepped onto the front garden of the parsonage museum. My first impression was that the grounds were smaller than I had imagined, but neatly kept with varied shrubs and trees providing a peaceful setting. I walked along the path and faced the museum with its five windows along the second story, its two windows on either side of the front door, and the two story extension on the right, added after the Reverend Brontë had died. The white curtains contrasting with the grey stone suggested a civilized and gracious façade had merged with the darker substance of life.
Here was the home where great works of literature were imagined and penned: Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey, The Professor, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Shirley, and Villette. Hundreds of pages written behind those windows during windstorms and endless rainy nights when the Brontë sisters would light candles, and the silhouettes of their bodies bent over the table would fade with the embers in the fire’s grate. In the imagined silence and stillness of a foggy dawn, brown moors and icy streams visited a corner in my mind’s eye where I saw nature’s elemental power igniting the Brontë soul to speak of passion and truth, and fuelling the mysterious yearning of a lonely spirit determined to unite with her invisible readers.
The building had been constructed in 1778. The windows and the front door all faced east toward Brow Moor, and the north gate entrance led onto Church Street toward St. Michael’s. Inside the parsonage museum, the rooms were dressed in the furnishings of the Brontë era, which spanned from 1820 to 1861 when Reverend Brontë died at the age of eighty-four, having outlived his wife and six children (two of the eldest girls had died young). To the left was the sitting room where the family received visitors, ate their meals, and enjoyed their writing. Recollections of Charlotte’s lifelong friend Ellen Nussey are documented in Margaret Smith’s first volume of Brontë letters:
“There was not much carpet any where except in the sitting room, and on the centre of the study floor. The hall floor and stairs were done with sand stone, always beautifully clean as everything about the house was, the walls were not papered but coloured in a pretty dove-coloured tint, hair-seated chairs and mahogany tables, book-shelves in the Study but not many of these elsewhere. Scant and bare indeed many will say, yet it was not a scantness that made itself felt--mind and thought, yes, I had almost said elegance, but certainly refinement diffused themselves over all, and made nothing really wanting” (599).
As I took my place behind the corded rope that prevented visitors from wandering freely throughout each room, I joined a proud membership in the society of pilgrims from all over the world who made this journey each year, in the thousands, to see the Brontë shrine. The Brontë name alone conjures a charming, collective image of isolated, genius writers living in a remote village surrounded by romantic moorland, far from the literary lights of London, and where they kept their talents veiled in secrecy. When the novels appeared under the male pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, conjecture and curiosity groomed the mystery surrounding authorship: who were these men? Evocative imaginings reached mythic proportions after the brothers became sisters who the public learned not only suffered great family tragedy but had also died young.
The family began in 1812 when Patrick Brontë married Maria Branwell. They had six children: five girls and one boy. By 1825, the Reverend’s wife and two eldest daughters had died. Cancer claimed their mother, and Maria and Elizabeth aged twelve and ten died from tuberculosis, a disease that would later take the lives of Emily and Anne, but in 1825, at nine years of age, Charlotte was now the eldest of the four remaining children. Branwell was eight, followed by Emily who was seven, and Anne, the youngest, who was only five when their mother died. The deaths continued. In September of 1848 at the age of thirty-one, Branwell died, followed in December of that year by Emily. Reverend Brontë, Charlotte, and Anne were still grieving their loss when Anne succumbed to tuberculosis a few months later in May of 1849. The combination of female genius, enigmatic characters revealed in the novels, and early deaths helped generate the myth of these three legendary sisters.
Dozens of representations of the novels, including films, television movies, musicals, operas, ballets, and plays keep the Brontë works alive in the hearts and minds of generations of readers and give us visual depictions of such powerful characters as Heathcliff, Catherine, Rochester, Jane, and Bertha Mason, the mad wife in the attic of gothic Thornfield manor. After so much reading and watching, I had finally arrived at the source of all that creativity and was standing inside the four walls where talent and productivity had surpassed most storytellers published during the Victorian era.
To the right of the hallway was Reverend Brontë’s study. The Reverend, a tall, erect man with a distinguished head of white hair, a broad brow, and high cheekbones, was a commanding figure. He carried himself with a justifiable pride, having been a graduate of Cambridge, and later an ordained minister in the Church of England. I pictured him at his desk, his head of white hair receding from a large forehead, his round glasses perched securely on his strong Irish nose, and his lips pursed as he read through the pages of his own book entitled Cottage Poems written in 1811 when he was a young Anglican curate in Shropshire. In his book of poetry, he introduces himself to the reader and then says that his religious duties should not curtail his desire to write: “a religious field” could certainly be one “favourable for a poet to range through.” He adds that if “the Author has not succeeded as a poet, he will not blame his subject, but will readily acknowledge the fault to be entirely his own; nor will he be able to offer, as an excuse, that he was not interested. He certainly was interested, and that in no small degree.” He had composed moral verses which he hoped would “be rendered useful to some poor soul” (qtd.in Lock 98). Thankfully, the man who believed in education and poetry had passed down his interest in literature to his children.
Next, I stood at the kitchen door and imagined Tabby, the Yorkshire woman who, at the age of fifty-four, began work as a servant a few years after the Brontës had arrived in Haworth. She remained their faithful servant for over thirty years, dying in February 1855 a few weeks before Charlotte’s death at the end of March. Tabby had her practical side but, with her broad accent, could easily spin a yarn sprinkled with the supernatural and the superstitious, or recount tales of the local families and their histories. She took charge of the children with kindness and a no-nonsense approach to life. Her “childers” soon regarded her as a loved member of the family.
I stared into the small space of a kitchen and imagined four children sitting round the blazing fire on a cold, snowy night. I recalled Charlotte’s rendering of a particular scene in her ‘Tales of the Islanders,’ and soon saw the stocky frame of Tabby settled at the table to sew the sleeve on one of Anne’s frocks. The flames in the grate beamed across the hearth and glittered over the copper kettle that Tabby had set on the hob to keep the tea warm. The glow of the ruddy fire barely stretched far enough to discern a tea tray with its teapot, cream ewer, and sugar basin nestled beside Tabby’s elbow.
Outside, flakes dropped fast, and the white storm blew cold and thick over grass and moor. The wind moaned and howled with such a high piercing squeal, the children requested the heartening addition of candlelight. Tabby, being a frugal and practical Yorkshire woman, saw no sense in wasting candles when the peat from the fire provided plenty of light. She lectured the children on the propriety of being wasteful when they had aught to fear and no need to see. In fact, they might prefer the darkness of sleep in their beds to the peaceful enjoyment of a cheery fire. The children acknowledged Tabby’s victory over the candle question when they witnessed none being produced.
A silence ensued until their brother Branwell sighed and said, “I don’t know what to do.” Emily and Anne echoed his sentiment.
Tabby offered a solution: “Wha ya may go t’bed.”
“I’d rather do anything than that,” said Branwell.
Charlotte weighed in with her impressions: “You’re so glum tonight, Tabby.” The woman continued her dressmaking without comment. Charlotte then suggested they imagine something exciting. “Suppose we had each an Island.”
Branwell’s eyes perked up. “If we had, I would choose the Island of Man.”
“I would choose the Isle of Wight,” said Charlotte.
“The Isle of Arran for me,” said Emily.
“And mine should be Guernsey,” added Anne.
Charlotte declared, “The Duke of Wellington should be my chief man.”
Branwell chose Colonel Herries, the Commandant of the Light Horse Volunteers of London and Westminster. Emily wanted the novelist Walter Scott to be her chief man, and Anne decided on Hans William Bentinck, the1st Earl of Portland who had been England’s ambassador to France in 1698 (Gaskell 53-54).
The children’s loud voices overpowered the wild tumult of the tempest outside. Their excitement grew as they planned how their chief men would inhabit these new islands. Soon they would begin writing down their tales but, for now, on this night, only their voices were recording their heroes’ adventures. Their fervour could not stop time, and soon the dismal sound of the grandfather clock striking seven alerted them to their fate. Tabby ordered they march straight up to bed, and the sound of her voice faded into the creak of footfalls on the floor above.
After this brief reverie in the kitchen, I crossed the hall to Arthur Bell Nicholls’ studio and remained only a short time to study his portrait. He had been born in Ireland of Scottish parents and attended Trinity College in Dublin. He became curate to Reverend Brontë in 1845 and in 1854 married Charlotte. His Irish features and grim face with its bushy beard and stern mouth conveyed a certain pride, and his dark eyes lacked humour and suggested an earnest deportment that could be intimidating. Charlotte’s father was outraged when his curate was bold enough to propose to his daughter and supported Charlotte’s refusal. He said “the match would be a degradation.” In December of 1852, Charlotte wrote to Ellen Nussey to explain her refusal to marry Nicholls: “My own objections arise from a sense of incongruity and uncongeniality in feelings, tastes [and] principles” (Letters, Vol.III 95). By 1854, she felt something quite different.
Her father thought his curate lacked prospects and was not good enough for his daughter. He also enjoyed his living situation and did not wish it to change with the inclusion of another man, but Nicholls persevered and assured Reverend Brontë that following the marriage, the aging Reverend’s “convenience and seclusion were to be scrupulously respected” (242). Nonetheless, on June 29, 1854, her father refused to make the short walk to the church to attend his daughter’s wedding. Charlotte Brontë, now Charlotte Nicholls remained married for nine months, until her death in March of 1855.
Nicholls remained in the parsonage until the Reverend’s death in 1861. The church trustees declined the curate’s offer to take over the Reverend’s position, so he left Haworth to return to Ireland where he married his cousin, became a farmer, and died in 1906 at the age of eighty-nine.
On the second floor of the parsonage were the bedrooms and the childre$n’s study. This small room was tucked between their father’s bedroom and their Aunt Branwell’s room. In 1821, the mother’s sister Elizabeth Branwell had moved in when Maria was dying. After her sister’s death, Aunt Branwell remained to assist the Reverend with the raising of the children.
Miss Branwell was a small, middle-aged lady with light auburn curls who preferred to dress in silk. She had come from Cornwall in the south and needed a few months to brace herself for the close, sultry days of summer, as well as the damp, sombre nights and slashing rain of winter. For the majority of the twenty-one years remaining in her life, she stayed inside the parsonage, avoiding Main Street entirely, but stepping out on Sunday mornings to walk the short distance across the churchyard, into St. Michael’s, and up the aisle to the front pew. At home, she read the newspapers, took her meals in her room, and indulged in her bit of snuff. While she was well read and able to discuss the news of the day with her brother-in-law, she was also proficient in sewing and needlework and passed these skills on to her nieces. She wanted the girls to learn proper manners and the household arts, which coincided with the Reverend’s desire that they take instruction in painting and music.
I peeked into the children’s study and thought I heard the soft tinkling sound of distant laughter. The scent of lilacs floated overhead and my stomach gave a subtle flip as I imagined an event made famous in Charlotte’s writings. One evening in 1826, the children’s father had brought home a box of twelve wooden soldiers for Branwell. Reverend Brontë went up the stairs to the room behind his own and quietly placed the box beside the sleeping boy’s bed. These soldiers would replace previous troops who had suffered the indignities of beheadings, chopped limbs, and burned bodies, as well as ignoble exiles into the marshy bogs. The recruits would be a welcome gift.
The Reverend recognized the precocious intelligence and fiery exuberance of his son and envisioned great success for his heir. Perhaps his boy would be a scholar, or a painter, or a brilliant poet worthy of the eminence of a Horace or a Virgil. Before leaving the boy in his tranquil repose, the father gently smoothed his son’s unruly red hair.
The next morning, the boy showed his sisters his latest treasure. The wooden uniforms had been carefully applied with paint. The soldiers were dressed in tall black boots, white pants, and white waistcoats under bright red jackets. They wore black hats, and some had white sashes across their chests and thick moustaches painted above their serious mouths. On seeing their brother’s gift, Charlotte and Emily immediately jumped from their bed. Charlotte quickly reached into the box and took out the tallest, proclaiming, “This is the Duke of Wellington! This shall be the duke!” Emily’s choice had a grave expression painted across his face, so they called him Gravey. Anne’s pick was a small soldier that they christened Waiting-boy. Branwell studied those remaining and lifted out the one with a commanding stature and called him Bonaparte. By December of the following year, during that snowy night in the kitchen with Tabby, the children’s soldiers became islanders, and in this cozy children’s study, they sat on the floor plotting their latest adventures. (Beer 182)
The interest in these two great military leaders, the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte arose from recent events in history. Since 1789, France had been entangled in a bloody Revolution that lasted ten years before its citizens witnessed major political shifts in their system of government. A democratic republic, led by General Bonaparte, replaced the monarchy and aristocratic rule and, with each successful battle across Europe, Napoleon grew in military might, declaring himself Emperor of France. Despite his initial victories, the Duke of Wellington, the commander of the British forces, defeated Napoleon in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo.
Their father enjoyed reading over the details of military campaigns and regaled the children with tales of battle scenes. His fondness for the stratagems of war and the exploits of generals heightened the children’s interest in playing soldiers and acting out attacks against the enemy, as they embroiled their imaginary soldiers in rebellion, revolution, and war. Charlotte saw herself in the strong, male persona of Wellington, leading her own personal rebellion against her sibling adversary, Branwell, who, as an only son would have wielded the power over his sisters in their more mundane roles as girls. For Charlotte and Branwell, the real life models of military leaders and emperors fused perfectly with the fictional lives of their wooden soldiers to create volumes of tales that grew to staggering proportions.
The minimal research I had done at this point enabled me to absorb and appreciate the impact this family has had on those who have enjoyed the novels and the films of the books. Readers from all over the world also find the legends and myths that abide around this family worth the journey to the parsonage museum where they can bask in the magic of their personal view of the Brontës because, for those brief years in the mid-nineteenth century, the air of Haworth was electric with acts of genius that resonate today. The aftermath of those creative outbursts has lasted through years of scholarship and study that continue to analyze while admiring the Brontës’ contribution to literature. Terms like “masterpiece,” “Shakespearean,” and “classic” are attached to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as they consistently appear on the top ten lists of novels written in the English language. Those who read the works simply for pleasure and entertainment connect on an emotional level with the temperamental characters and wild landscape and become part of the Brontë phenomenon.
When I left the parsonage and began a short walk along the moors, the late afternoon sun had slipped behind a few grey clouds. I passed mounds of heather, low shrubs, and scrubby bushes as I strolled along paths beside brown fields and grassy knolls. Along the horizon, green hills dipped towards darker hills, some bordered with a dark band of trees and others with low cloud. The shadows among the trees were slightly undulating from a northerly breeze and the tall grasses leaned to the south. Drawn by the image of the Brontë children running ahead of me, I continued along a barren stretch of moors until I halted on a rise to glance down upon the serene landscape with its ribbons of gravel paths cutting through miles of heather. The land, while desolate and vast, was not gloomy or bleak, and prompted a moment’s contemplation of nature’s endurance and splendour.
Within moments, the weather changed and a mist drifted toward me. The darkening sky lingered as the wind gave a blast that sent the mist fleeing over the hills. I had just stepped around a watery bog and was coming to the tip of another rise when a sight yards ahead startled me. The sudden shock almost compelled me to lose my balance. As the mist swept past, clearing a patch on the moor, I noted a strange form on the edge of a ridge, and my quiet contemplation banished when the dark shape moved. In the shadow of a black cloud it loomed like a frightful spectre.
Fortunately, its back was to me and had not observed my presence. I froze and stirred not a muscle. The wind had picked up its force, and I feared the cold in my blood would still my heart, but the greater fear surfaced in my throat when the moan of the wind altered to a dreadful cry. The anguish in my chest exploded into a frightened sigh, my breath panting, and my body stiff with dread. I wished I had never come alone onto the moors. What foolish prompting had led me to wander this sparse heath so late in the day? The ghastly shrieks wakened every urge to flee. I waited for the precise moment to twist around unseen and run.
The daylight had all but disappeared, but my eyes suddenly beheld that the form and its wretched cry had come from a shape that seemed human. A man it was, and he stood rigid on the moors, head back, weeping his misery beneath the desolate sky. His cloak blew open and whipped behind him and still he did not move. The doom of twilight fast approached, and his shrieks subsided with the dimming light. The wind that beat against his face burned mine with the same harsh chill. I prayed his torment would soon end.
I imagined his face and recognized that ghostly countenance. In all the lonely landscape, no lonelier aspect existed. Here was Heathcliff, doomed lover of Catherine, landlord of Thrushcross Grange, and inhabitant of that infamous dwelling Wuthering Heights. I had read that he still haunts the moors, and now I was witness to his ghoulish mien. Alone we remained, I mesmerized by his mysterious power, he oblivious to his uninvited intruder. His head bowed to the weight of his sorrow, his hands wiped back the tears, and his fingers pressed into his brow. I asked myself if any man in literature had ever felt such grief.
His cries on the bleak moor and the howl of the wind had fallen mute. The smouldering mist crept on as the wind lost its force. Only the cold remained. The misery was over for now. I stepped toward the ridge and saw that the man would never take his inner tempest home. He was gone, but he would remain connected to these moors forever, haunting the crags and hills for his beloved Catherine. The alarm had passed. The space where his body had been shrank back to its natural state. The wild birds fluttered over my head in search of warm nooks. Faint streaks of sunlight strained between the dark clouds and, from far away, I heard the sighs of a breeze as it headed toward the sea. The man had been an illusion, of course, a melancholy fantasy brought on by the effects of both the Brontë’s mystique and an active imagination, but the leaves of a stunted elm tree moping in the distance had charged the atmosphere with possibility.
My immersion in the culture of the Brontës had evidently coloured my view of the moors and affected my perception of what was truly before my eyes. For a moment, I had lost my objectivity and allowed my mind to drift with the romance inherent in the Brontë culture. I believed I had seen something that was not actually there but, as we all know, if we hear stories of hauntings and ghostly sightings enough times, we begin to believe spirits may indeed exist and, perhaps, one day we will actually see a lone figure roaming the moors. In a similar manner, if we are told all three Brontë sisters were genius writers, we accept this assertion as fact, even though objective reality may dispute this long-held belief, but the image is too strong and the romance too deep to encourage us to take a closer look; the assertion colours our view, and we naturally ignore evidence that suggests our perception of the Brontës may be an illusion.
What if the mythology of three genius sisters is an illusion, a fantasy perpetrated by Charlotte, and only she wrote everything? Scholars will attest to the fact that Charlotte manufactured a specific mythology around her sisters, are troubled over the inconsistencies and unable to reconcile the discrepancies, so they accept that these mysteries will never be solved. Understandably, they would certainly be unwilling to support the “one Brontë genius” theory without substantial evidence, but what if things are not what they seem and overlooked evidence exists?
The historical and biographical facts are undisputed except when linked to the actual writings themselves. Scholars and critics admit, that on a number of issues, contradictory facts and inexplicable mysteries abound. Most enthusiasts of the Brontës know the story of the sisters’ lives; less ardent fans may only be aware of a few facts, while a large population of readers simply enjoys the books without delving further into the intricacies of family or village life during the Brontë era. Some of those readers may not know that brother Branwell was an alcoholic and drug addict, or that the Reverend Brontë, although President of the Haworth Temperance Society (Branwell was also a member) drank as well, as did a significant number of the men in their village.
Nor will they be aware that no manuscripts with Emily’s or Anne’s handwriting have ever been found, or that their publisher, who would have seen the original manuscripts, declared that Charlotte was the sole author, or that diary papers written by the younger sisters and later discovered in the 1890s are examples of childish musings, and in Emily’s case, of such poor craftsmanship that she shows no discernable aptitude for writing at all.
By 1849, a few critics were deducing that the three Bell brothers were actually one author who wrote all the works, but in 1850, they let their suppositions go. In that year, after her sisters were both dead, the second edition of Wuthering Heights came out, and included a “Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell,” in which Charlotte rejected the one-author theory. Also, however, as Lucasta Miller states in the preface, the Notice contained “ambiguous and contradictory comments”. Charlotte underplayed her sister’s ability: “Instead of acknowledging Emily’s intellectual sophistication, she presented her as a simple country girl, who was not ‘learned’”. Charlotte gave the impression that the novel came from “a childish mind”; consequently, her remarks “led to the apocryphal claim that Branwell Brontë . . . had written it”. Reviewers and scholars were left to explain unresolved mysteries surrounding the book and its author: “rather than offering unvarnished facts, she created a legend. Like many who came after her, she responded to the discomfort created by Wuthering Heights by taking refuge in myth” (viii-ix). Why would Charlotte equivocate when the Biographical Notice provided an excellent opportunity to inform her readers about the book and its author? Rather than clarify misconceptions, she fuelled them. Her choice made no sense, unless she felt compelled to mask the truth in an extraordinary and excessive way.
When the mist of mythology lifts and the novels are read as one body of work, the discrepancies begin to fade. Charlotte left clues to direct her readers to her detailed explanations as to why she might have lied, and she provided a view of her world that is unlike anything her readers could ever imagine. The reality, not the vision of her life, can be seen with the aid of clues and covert messages that she hid throughout the Brontë novels, poems, and letters and will provide a new and startling depiction of the Brontë story. Her reality involved a belief that a few rogue men in her community, with their greed and desire for vengeance, had planned and perpetrated the early deaths of many prominent citizens.
Due to film and television images, however, some readers may view the Brontës in a more romantic light, picturing tempestuous winds circling isolated moors and medieval manors. They may think of Haworth during the Brontë years as a grim and lonely place, unlike the quaint villages of cozy mysteries where neighbours in their ivy-covered cottages welcome visitors with a pot of tea, or leisurely wander Main Street trading pleasantries with shopkeepers. The factual reality renders a much darker vision of an early, nineteenth-century, industrial village mired in grime, with its inhabitants suffering from the effects of poor sanitation, disease, and high mortality rates.
In order to understand why Charlotte Brontë felt it necessary to orchestrate a hoax of three writing sisters, we must examine her village and the inhabitants of her Township, not with a blind sentimentality but with a clear perception of how a small population of wealthy and powerful men may have seen financial possibilities in the misfortunes of others, and how they could have exploited the frequent incidences of sickness and death to their advantage in the pursuit of greater wealth and power. According to Brontë, this vicious element ran the village, like a modern day criminal syndicate, and flourished unchecked with the aid of alcohol, guns, violence, and fear, but their strongest weapon in their successful campaigns of thievery and murder was their shared oath of secrecy. No member of their select brotherhood would ever divulge the crimes unless he wanted his throat cut, but occasionally their macabre plots would slip from lips loosened by alcohol just when an inquiring mind, with a writer’s ear for story, was lurking and listening to their boastful admissions of guilt.
Secrets and myths can conceal reality, but truth can release their grip. Charlotte Brontë believed these men were committing crimes, and she was terrified of the criminals, but she was equally determined to reveal their brutal tale. Her methods are stunning, surprising, and so ingenious that they have remained hidden for over a hundred and sixty years, but with the key to her code now found, the revelations can finally escape from the secrets and myths.
For those who prefer the myth that Brontë fabricated, this adventure may prove disappointing and upsetting, but if we allow her other side to guide us, we might learn to accept a more believable reality. The myth-maker herself wrote in chapter thirty-nine of her final novel Villette an alternative sentiment: “I always, through my whole life, liked to penetrate to the real truth;” therefore, perhaps we should follow her lead and penetrate the fiction to resolve the mysteries that fuel the myths.
BOOK ONE: HAWORTH VILLAGE
The Village of Haworth
The name means hedged enclosure, but the Brontë sisters’ village of Haworth, in the gently sloping Upper Worth Valley, never got an Enclosure Act. Instead of landowners setting borders with fences, ditches, stone walls or hedgerows, the men left the uncultivated stretches of moorland to grow wild. Major wars against the French during the late 1700s and early 1800s prevented open trade between Britain and France, which created a shortage of cereal and caused an increase in the price of grain; consequently, the richer proprietors of the land perceived the old grazing practises on the commons as a waste of valuable property. Crops could provide food for a growing population and increase revenue for the owners, so supply and demand motivated the landowners to cultivate the land, plant crops, charge tenants higher rents, and earn bigger profits. Labour increased in arable areas when farmers hired men to plough, sow, hoe, and harvest crops. This new economy gave rise to industries like brewing and milling, and a surge in beer and ale consumption, as did the construction of small mills and, later, the cottages to provide shelter for the workers until, gradually, larger textile mills emerged among the surrounding farmland.
The Haworth Township covers approximately 10,500 acres and includes the villages of Near and Far Oxenhope and Stanbury. To better industrialize the partitioned topography, owners cleaned up the land. They cleared the heather and bracken, drained the soggy soil, and added fertilizer and lime for healthy crops. The sheep had already settled in the grasslands, so the wool was handy for the warp, woof, shuffle, and weave of the textile workers busy inside the cottages scattered on various farms.
Horses chewed oats or worked the ploughs, and birds called twites circled under sunny skies. These small, brown songbirds flew to this southern edge of the Pennine mountain range to feast on the red berries of the mountain ash and on the arable weeds growing in the oat fields. Food was plentiful for flocks of lapwings and curlews that gorged in the hay meadows while keeping an eye out for predators like wrens, peregrine falcons, and shorthaired owls.
Unlike the industrialized lands, the moors remained uncultivated and unimproved, just like Mother Nature had devised. The rise and fall of heath provided not only wild scenery in its heather and ferns, but also stone and shale byways for the Brontë children to scramble over, past nettles and prickly hedges, or to splash through mud and marsh. One can imagine bees stirring in a bilberry shrub as the three sisters carefully picked daisies and bluebells, humming in tune with the birdsong.
Their South Pennine village of Haworth overlooks a tributary of the Aire called the River Worth. Its surface water ripples at the first indication of an approaching spring breeze. In summer, during the Brontë era, nothing was dreamier than the scent of stocks and wallflowers wafting along in the warm air. As the breeze intensified, a weakened formation of scattered trees provided scant resistance to the autumn winds, and the peat bogs and moorland grasses failed to correct the mounting blasts of winter’s south-westerlies, whirling like avenging Furies across the moors. The winds lost steam and dipped momentarily into the quarry hollows where men extracted flagstones for the roads and smoothed blocks of masonry for the buildings. Then the winds reached Main Street and the idyllic pastoral scents and fragrances floating on the breeze withered from the smell of sewage and death.
In 1850 Benjamin Herschel Babbage, the superintending inspector for the Board of Health, filed a report regarding the sanitation and water supply in the village; he concluded that Haworth was a town of deadly microbes, much in need of purification. His observations contribute to the facts and statistics in this chapter with respect to sanitation and health (see Babbage Report). When he first arrived, he would have seen a Main Street much like today, one that ran three-quarters of a mile up an incline as steep as a pitched roof, with grey stone houses hugging the road’s edge from bottom to top. He would also have noted that the close range between road and windows provided an easy reach for throwing garbage onto the street. This practise and other shocking observations formed the basis of his report.