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Eminent Women Series

Edited by John H. Ingram

EMILY BRONTE

All Rights Reserved.




EMILY BRONTE

by

A. MARY F. ROBINSON

Second Edition.







London:
W. H. Allen and Co.
13, Waterloo Place
1883.

[All Rights Reserved]

London:
Printed by W. H. Allen and Co., 13 Waterloo Place. S.W.




CONTENTS.

                                                          PAGE

  Introduction                                               1

  CHAPTER I.
    Parentage                                                8

  CHAPTER II.
    Babyhood                                                18

  CHAPTER III.
    Cowan's Bridge                                          28

  CHAPTER IV.
    Childhood                                               40

  CHAPTER V.
    Going to School                                         53

  CHAPTER VI.
    Girlhood at Haworth                                     61

  CHAPTER VII.
    In the Rue d'Isabelle                                   77

  CHAPTER VIII.
    A Retrospect                                            92

  CHAPTER IX.
    The Recall                                             103

  CHAPTER X.
    The Prospectuses                                       111

  CHAPTER XI.
    Branwell's Fall                                        116

  CHAPTER XII.
    Writing Poetry                                         128

  CHAPTER XIII.
    Troubles                                               144

  CHAPTER XIV.
    Wuthering Heights: its Origin                          154

  CHAPTER XV.
    Wuthering Heights: the Story                           168

  CHAPTER XVI.
    'Shirley'                                              209

  CHAPTER XVII.
    Branwell's End                                         217

  CHAPTER XVIII.
    Emily's Death                                          223

  FINIS!                                                   233


       *       *       *       *       *


LIST OF AUTHORITIES.


 1846-56. The Works of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.

    1857. Life of Charlotte Bronte. _Mrs. Gaskell. 1st and 2nd Editions._

    1877. Charlotte Bronte. _T. Wemyss Reid._

    1877. Note on Charlotte Bronte. _A. C. Swinburne._

    1881. Three Great Englishwomen. _P. Bayne._
          MS. Lecture on Emily Bronte. _T. Wemyss Reid._
          MS. Notes on Emily and Charlotte Bronte. _Miss Ellen Nussey._
          MS. Letters of Charlotte and Branwell Bronte.

    1879. Reminiscences of the Brontes. _Miss E. Nussey._

    1870. Unpublished Letters of Charlotte, Emily,
            and Anne Bronte. _Hours at Home._

    1846. Emily Bronte's Annotated Copy of her Poems.

    1872. Branwell Bronte: in the "Mirror." _G. S. Phillips._

    1879. Pictures of the Past. _F. H. Grundy._

    1830. Prospectus of the Clergymen's Daughters' School
            at Cowan's Bridge.

    1850. Preface to Wuthering Heights. _Charlotte Bronte._

    1850. Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell. _Charlotte Bronte._

    1850. Wuthering Heights: in the "Palladium." _Sydney Dobell._
          Personal Reminiscences of Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Ratcliffe, Mrs. Brown,
            and Mr. William Wood, of Haworth.

 1811-18. Poems of Patrick Bronte, B.A., Incumbent of Haworth.

    1879. Haworth: Past and Present. _J. Horsfall Turner._

       *       *       *       *       *




EMILY BRONTE.




INTRODUCTION.


There are, perhaps, few tests of excellence so sure as the popular
verdict on a work of art a hundred years after its accomplishment. So
much time must be allowed for the swing and rebound of taste, for the
despoiling of tawdry splendours and to permit the work of art itself to
form a public capable of appreciating it. Such marvellous fragments
reach us of Elizabethan praises; and we cannot help recalling the number
of copies of 'Prometheus Unbound' sold in the lifetime of the poet. We
know too well "what porridge had John Keats," and remember with
misgiving the turtle to which we treated Hobbs and Nobbs at dinner, and
how complacently we watched them put on their laurels afterwards.

Let us, then, by all means distrust our own and the public estimation of
all heroes dead within a hundred years. Let us, in laying claim to an
infallible verdict, remember how oddly our decisions sound at the other
side of Time's whispering gallery. Shall we therefore pronounce only on
Chaucer and Shakespeare, on Gower and our learned Ben? Alas! we are too
sure of their relative merits; we stake our reputations with no qualms,
no battle-ardours. These we reserve to them for whom the future is not
yet secure, for whom a timely word may still be spoken, for whom we yet
may feel that lancing out of enthusiasm only possible when the cast of
fate is still unknown, and, as we fight, we fancy that the glory of our
hero is in our hands.

But very gradually the victory is gained. A taste is unconsciously
formed for the qualities necessary to the next development of
art--qualities which Blake in his garret, Millet without the sou, set
down in immortal work. At last, when the time is ripe, some connoisseur
sees the picture, blows the dust from the book, and straightway blazons
his discovery. Mr. Swinburne, so to speak, blew the dust from 'Wuthering
Heights'; and now it keeps its proper rank in the shelf where Coleridge
and Webster, Hofmann and Leopardi have their place. Until then, a few
brave lines of welcome from Sydney Dobell, one fine verse of Mr.
Arnold's, one notice from Mr. Reid, was all the praise that had been
given to the book by those in authority. Here and there a mill-girl in
the West Riding factories read and re-read the tattered copy from the
lending library; here