Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle Part 53

'_November_ 6_th_, 1847.

'DEAR SIR,--I should be obliged to you if you will direct the inclosed to be posted in London as I wish to avoid giving any clue to my place of residence, publicity not being my ambition.

'It is an answer to the letter I received yesterday, favoured by you.

This letter bore the signature G. H. Lewes, and the writer informs me that it is his intention to write a critique on _Jane Eyre_ for the December number of _Fraser's Magazine_, and possibly also, he intimates, a brief notice to the _Westminster Review_. Upon the whole he seems favourably inclined to the work, though he hints disapprobation of the melodramatic portions.

'Can you give me any information respecting Mr. Lewes? what station he occupies in the literary world and what works he has written? He styles himself "a fellow novelist." There is something in the candid tone of his letter which inclines me to think well of him.

'I duly received your letter containing the notices from the _Critic_, and the two magazines, and also the _Morning Post_. I hope all these notices will work together for good; they must at any rate give the book a certain publicity.--Yours sincerely,

'C. BRONTE.'

Mr. R. H. Horne {434} sent her his _Orion_.

TO R. H. HORNE

'_December_ 15_th_, 1847.

'DEAR SIR,--You will have thought me strangely tardy in acknowledging your courteous present, but the fact is it never reached me till yesterday; the parcel containing it was missent--consequently it lingered a fortnight on its route.

'I have to thank you, not merely for the gift of a little book of 137 pages, but for that of a _poem_. Very real, very sweet is the poetry of _Orion_; there are pa.s.sages I shall recur to again and yet again--pa.s.sages instinct both with power and beauty. All through it is genuine--pure from one flaw of affectation, rich in n.o.ble imagery.

How far the applause of critics has rewarded the author of _Orion_ I do not know, but I think the pleasure he enjoyed in its composition must have been a bounteous meed in itself. You could not, I imagine, have written that epic without at times deriving deep happiness from your work.

'With sincere thanks for the pleasure its perusal has afforded me,--I remain, dear sir, yours faithfully,

'C. BELL.'

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

'HAWORTH, _December_ 15_th_, 1847.

'DEAR SIR,--I write a line in haste to apprise you that I have got the parcel. It was sent, through the carelessness of the railroad people, to Bingley, where it lay a fortnight, till a Haworth carrier happening to pa.s.s that way brought it on to me.

'I was much pleased to find that you had been kind enough to forward the _Mirror_ along with _Fraser_. The article on "the last new novel" is in substance similar to the notice in the _Sunday Times_.

One pa.s.sage only excited much interest in me; it was that where allusion is made to some former work which the author of _Jane Eyre_ is supposed to have published--there, I own, my curiosity was a little stimulated. The reviewer cannot mean the little book of rhymes to which Currer Bell contributed a third; but as that, and _Jane Eyre_, and a brief translation of some French verses sent anonymously to a magazine, are the sole productions of mine that have ever appeared in print, I am puzzled to know to what else he can refer.

'The reviewer is mistaken, as he is in perverting my meaning, in attributing to me designs I know not, principles I disown.

'I have been greatly pleased with Mr. R. H. Horne's poem of _Orion_.

Will you have the kindness to forward to him the inclosed note, and to correct the address if it is not accurate?--Believe me, dear sir, yours respectfully,

'C. BELL.'

The following elaborate criticism of one of Mr. Lewes's now forgotten novels is almost pathetic; it may give a modern critic pause in his serious treatment of the abundant literary ephemera of which we hear so much from day to day.

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

'_May_ 1_st_, 1848.

'MY DEAR SIR,--I am glad you sent me your letter just as you had written it--without revisal, without retrenching or softening touch, because I cannot doubt that I am a gainer by the omission.

'It would be useless to attempt opposition to your opinions, since, in fact, to read them was to recognise, almost point for point, a clear definition of objections I had already felt, but had found neither the power nor the will to express. Not the power, because I find it very difficult to a.n.a.lyse closely, or to criticise in appropriate words; and not the will, because I was afraid of doing Mr. Lewes injustice. I preferred overrating to underrating the merits of his work.

'Mr. Lewes's sincerity, energy, and talent a.s.suredly command the reader's respect, but on what points he depends to win his attachment I know not. I do not think he cares to excite the pleasant feelings which incline the taught to the teacher as much in friends.h.i.+p as in reverence. The display of his acquirements, to which almost every page bears testimony--citations from Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, and German authors covering as with embroidery the texture of his English--awes and astonishes the plain reader; but if, in addition, you permit yourself to require the refining charm of delicacy, the elevating one of imagination--if you permit yourself to be as fastidious and exacting in these matters as, by your own confession, it appears _you_ are, then Mr. Lewes must necessarily inform you that he does not deal in the article; probably he will add that _therefore_ it must be non-essential. I should fear he might even stigmatise imagination as a figment, and delicacy as an affectation.

'An honest rough heartiness Mr. Lewes will give you; yet in case you have the misfortune to remark that the heartiness might be quite as honest if it were less rough, would you not run the risk of being termed a sentimentalist or a dreamer?

'Were I privileged to address Mr. Lewes, and were it wise or becoming to say to him exactly what one thinks, I should utter words to this effect--

'"You have a sound, clear judgment as far as it goes, but I conceive it to be limited; your standard of talent is high, but I cannot acknowledge it to be the highest; you are deserving of all attention when you lay down the law on principles, but you are to be resisted when you dogmatise on feelings.

'"To a certain point, Mr. Lewes, you can go, but no farther. Be as sceptical as you please on whatever lies beyond a certain intellectual limit; the mystery will never be cleared up to you, for that limit you will never overpa.s.s. Not all your learning, not all your reading, not all your sagacity, not all your perseverance can help you over one viewless line--one boundary as impa.s.sable as it is invisible. To enter that sphere a man must be born within it; and untaught peasants have there drawn their first breath, while learned philosophers have striven hard till old age to reach it, and have never succeeded." I should not dare, nor would it be right, to say this to Mr. Lewes, but I cannot help thinking it both of him and many others who have a great name in the world.

'Hester Mason's character, career, and fate appeared to me so strange, grovelling, and miserable, that I never for a moment doubted the whole dreary picture was from the life. I thought in describing the "rustic poetess," in giving the details of her vulgar provincial and disreputable metropolitan notoriety, and especially in touching on the ghastly catastrophe of her fate, he was faithfully recording facts--thus, however repulsively, yet conscientiously "pointing a moral," if not "adorning a tale"; but if Hester be the daughter of Lewes's imagination, and if her experience and her doom be inventions of his fancy, I wish him better, and higher, and truer taste next time he writes a novel.

'Julius's exploit with the side of bacon is not defensible; he might certainly, for the fee of a s.h.i.+lling or sixpence, have got a boy to carry it for him.

'Captain Heath, too, must have cut a deplorable figure behind the post-chaise.

'Mrs. Vyner strikes one as a portrait from the life; and it equally strikes one that the artist hated his original model with a personal hatred. She is made so bad that one cannot in the least degree sympathise with any of those who love her; one can only despise them.

She is a fiend, and therefore not like Mr. Thackeray's Rebecca, where neither vanity, heartlessness, nor falsehood have been spared by the vigorous and skilful hand which portrays them, but where the human being has been preserved nevertheless, and where, consequently, the lesson given is infinitely more impressive. We can learn little from the strange fantasies of demons--we are not of their kind; but the vices of the deceitful, selfish man or woman humble and warn us. In your remarks on the good girls I concur to the letter; and I must add that I think Blanche, amiable as she is represented, could never have loved her husband after she had discovered that he was utterly despicable. Love is stronger than Cruelty, stronger than Death, but perishes under Meanness; Pity may take its place, but Pity is not Love.

'So far, then, I not only agree with you, but I marvel at the nice perception with which you have discriminated, and at the accuracy with which you have marked each coa.r.s.e, cold, improbable, unseemly defect. But now I am going to take another side: I am going to differ from you, and it is about Cecil Chamberlayne.

'You say that no man who had intellect enough to paint a picture, or write a comic opera, could act as he did; you say that men of genius and talent may have egregious faults, but they cannot descend to brutality or meanness. Would that the case were so! Would that intellect could preserve from low vice! But, alas! it cannot. No, the whole character of Cecil is painted with but too faithful a hand; it is very masterly, because it is very true. Lewes is n.o.bly right when he says that intellect is _not_ the highest faculty of man, though it may be the most brilliant; when he declares that the _moral_ nature of his kind is more sacred than the _intellectual_ nature; when he prefers "goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice to all the talents in the world."

'There is something divine in the thought that genius preserves from degradation, were it but true; but Savage tells us it was not true for him; Sheridan confirms the avowal, and Byron seals it with terrible proof.

'You never probably knew a Cecil Chamberlayne. If you had known such a one you would feel that Lewes has rather subdued the picture than overcharged it; you would know that mental gifts without moral firmness, without a clear sense of right and wrong, without the honourable principle which makes a man rather proud than ashamed of honest labour, are no guarantee from even deepest baseness.

'I have received the _Dublin University Magazine_. The notice is more favourable than I had antic.i.p.ated; indeed, I had for a long time ceased to antic.i.p.ate any from that quarter; but the critic does not strike one as too bright. Poor Mr. James is severely handled; _you_, likewise, are hard upon him. He always strikes me as a miracle of productiveness.

'I must conclude by thanking you for your last letter, which both pleased and instructed me. You are quite right in thinking it exhibits the writer's character. Yes, it exhibits it _unmistakeably_ (as Lewes would say). And whenever it shall be my lot to submit another MS. to your inspection, I shall crave the full benefit of certain points in that character: I shall ever entreat my _first critic_ to be as impartial as he is friendly; what he feels to be out of taste in my writings, I hope he will unsparingly condemn. In the excitement of composition, one is apt to fall into errors that one regrets afterwards, and we never feel our own faults so keenly as when we see them exaggerated in others.

'I conclude in haste, for I have written too long a letter; but it is because there was much to answer in yours. It interested me. I could not help wis.h.i.+ng to tell you how nearly I agreed with you.--Believe me, yours sincerely,

'C. BELL.'

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

'_April_ 5_th_, 1849.

'MY DEAR SIR,--Your note was very welcome. I purposely impose on myself the restraint of writing to you seldom now, because I know but too well my letters cannot be cheering. Yet I confess I am glad when the post brings me a letter: it reminds me that if the sun of action and life does not s.h.i.+ne on us, it yet beams full on other parts of the world--and I like the recollection.

'I am not going to complain. Anne has indeed suffered much at intervals since I last wrote to you--frost and east wind have had their effect. She has pa.s.sed nights of sleeplessness and pain, and days of depression and languor which nothing could cheer--but still, with the return of genial weather she revives. I cannot perceive that she is feebler now than she was a month ago, though that is not saying much. It proves, however, that no rapid process of destruction is going on in her frame, and keeps alive a hope that with the renovating aid of summer she may yet be spared a long time.

'What you tell me of Mr. Lewes seems to me highly characteristic.

How sanguine, versatile, and self-confident must that man be who can with ease exchange the quiet sphere of the author for the bustling one of the actor! I heartily wish him success; and, in happier times, there are few things I should have relished more than an opportunity of seeing him in his new character.