BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF ELLIS AND ACTON BELL

It has been thought that all the works published under the names ofCurrer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were, in reality, the production ofone person. This mistake I endeavoured to rectify by a few wordsof disclaimer prefixed to the third edition of 'Jane Eyre. ' These, too, it appears, failed to gain general credence, and now, on theoccasion of a reprint of 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Agnes Grey, ' I amadvised distinctly to state how the case really stands. 

Indeed, I feel myself that it is time the obscurity attending thosetwo names--Ellis and Acton--was done away. The little mystery, which formerly yielded some harmless pleasure, has lost itsinterest; circumstances are changed. It becomes, then, my duty toexplain briefly the origin and authorship of the books written byCurrer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. 

About five years ago, my two sisters and myself, after a somewhatprolonged period of separation, found ourselves reunited, and athome. Resident in a remote district, where education had madelittle progress, and where, consequently, there was no inducementto seek social intercourse beyond our own domestic circle, we werewholly dependent on ourselves and each other, on books and study, for the enjoyments and occupations of life. The highest stimulus, as well as the liveliest pleasure we had known from childhoodupwards, lay in attempts at literary composition; formerly we usedto show each other what we wrote, but of late years this habit ofcommunication and consultation had been discontinued; hence itensued, that we were mutually ignorant of the progress we mightrespectively have made. 

One day, in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS. Volume of verse in my sister Emily's handwriting. Of course, I wasnot surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: Ilooked it over, and something more than surprise seized me--a deepconviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all likethe poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed andterse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiarmusic--wild, melancholy, and elevating. 

My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative character, norone on the recesses of whose mind and feelings even those nearestand dearest to her could, with impunity, intrude unlicensed; ittook hours to reconcile her to the discovery I had made, and daysto persuade her that such poems merited publication. I knew, however, that a mind like hers could not be without some latentspark of honourable ambition, and refused to be discouraged in myattempts to fan that spark to flame. 

Meantime, my younger sister quietly produced some of her owncompositions, intimating that, since Emily's had given me pleasure, I might like to look at hers. I could not but be a partial judge, yet I thought that these verses, too, had a sweet, sincere pathosof their own. 

We had very early cherished the dream of one day becoming authors. This dream, never relinquished even when distance divided andabsorbing tasks occupied us, now suddenly acquired strength andconsistency: it took the character of a resolve. We agreed toarrange a small selection of our poems, and, if possible, to getthem printed. Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our ownnames under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguouschoice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple atassuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did notlike to declare ourselves women, because--without at that timesuspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what iscalled 'feminine'--we had a vague impression that authoresses areliable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how criticssometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, andfor their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise. 

The bringing out of our little book was hard work. As was to beexpected, neither we nor our poems were at all wanted; but for thiswe had been prepared at the outset; though inexperienced ourselves, we had read the experience of others. The great puzzle lay in thedifficulty of getting answers of any kind from the publishers towhom we applied. Being greatly harassed by this obstacle, Iventured to apply to the Messrs. Chambers, of Edinburgh, for a wordof advice; THEY may have forgotten the circumstance, but _I_ havenot, for from them I received a brief and business-like, but civiland sensible reply, on which we acted, and at last made a way. 

The book was printed: it is scarcely known, and all of it thatmerits to be known are the poems of Ellis Bell. The fixedconviction I held, and hold, of the worth of these poems has notindeed received the confirmation of much favourable criticism; butI must retain it notwithstanding. 

Ill-success failed to crush us: the mere effort to succeed hadgiven a wonderful zest to existence; it must be pursued. We eachset to work on a prose tale: Ellis Bell produced 'WutheringHeights, ' Acton Bell 'Agnes Grey, ' and Currer Bell also wrote anarrative in one volume. These MSS. Were perseveringly obtrudedupon various publishers for the space of a year and a half;usually, their fate was an ignominious and abrupt dismissal. 

At last 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Agnes Grey' were accepted on termssomewhat impoverishing to the two authors; Currer Bell's book foundacceptance nowhere, nor any acknowledgment of merit, so thatsomething like the chill of despair began to invade her heart. Asa forlorn hope, she tried one publishing house more--Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. Ere long, in a much shorter space than that on whichexperience had taught her to calculate--there came a letter, whichshe opened in the dreary expectation of finding two hard, hopelesslines, intimating that Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. 'were notdisposed to publish the MS. , ' and, instead, she took out of theenvelope a letter of two pages. She read it trembling. Itdeclined, indeed, to publish that tale, for business reasons, butit discussed its merits and demerits so courteously, soconsiderately, in a spirit so rational, with a discrimination soenlightened, that this very refusal cheered the author better thana vulgarly expressed acceptance would have done. It was added, that a work in three volumes would meet with careful attention. 

I was then just completing 'Jane Eyre, ' at which I had been workingwhile the one-volume tale was plodding its weary round in London:in three weeks I sent it off; friendly and skilful hands took itin. This was in the commencement of September, 1847; it came outbefore the close of October following, while 'Wuthering Heights'and 'Agnes Grey, ' my sisters' works, which had already been in thepress for months, still lingered under a different management. 

They appeared at last. Critics failed to do them justice. Theimmature but very real powers revealed in 'Wuthering Heights' werescarcely recognised; its import and nature were misunderstood; theidentity of its author was misrepresented; it was said that thiswas an earlier and ruder attempt of the same pen which had produced'Jane Eyre. ' Unjust and grievous error! We laughed at it atfirst, but I deeply lament it now. Hence, I fear, arose aprejudice against the book. That writer who could attempt to palmoff an inferior and immature production under cover of onesuccessful effort, must indeed be unduly eager after the secondaryand sordid result of authorship, and pitiably indifferent to itstrue and honourable meed. If reviewers and the public trulybelieved this, no wonder that they looked darkly on the cheat. 

Yet I must not be understood to make these things subject forreproach or complaint; I dare not do so; respect for my sister'smemory forbids me. By her any such querulous manifestation wouldhave been regarded as an unworthy and offensive weakness. 

It is my duty, as well as my pleasure, to acknowledge one exceptionto the general rule of criticism. One writer, endowed with thekeen vision and fine sympathies of genius, has discerned the realnature of 'Wuthering Heights, ' and has, with equal accuracy, notedits beauties and touched on its faults. Too often do reviewersremind us of the mob of Astrologers, Chaldeans, and Soothsayersgathered before the 'writing on the wall, ' and unable to read thecharacters or make known the interpretation. We have a right torejoice when a true seer comes at last, some man in whom is anexcellent spirit, to whom have been given light, wisdom, andunderstanding; who can accurately read the 'Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin' of an original mind (however unripe, howeverinefficiently cultured and partially expanded that mind may be);and who can say with confidence, 'This is the interpretationthereof. 

Yet even the writer to whom I allude shares the mistake about theauthorship, and does me the injustice to suppose that there wasequivoque in my former rejection of this honour (as an honour Iregard it). May I assure him that I would scorn in this and inevery other case to deal in equivoque; I believe language to havebeen given us to make our meaning clear, and not to wrap it indishonest doubt?

'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, ' by Acton Bell, had likewise anunfavourable reception. At this I cannot wonder. The choice ofsubject was an entire mistake. Nothing less congruous with thewriter's nature could be conceived. The motives which dictatedthis choice were pure, but, I think, slightly morbid. She had, inthe course of her life, been called on to contemplate, near athand, and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents misusedand faculties abused: hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved, and dejected nature; what she saw sank very deeply into her mind;it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be aduty to reproduce every detail (of course with fictitiouscharacters, incidents, and situations), as a warning to others. She hated her work, but would pursue it. When reasoned with on thesubject, she regarded such reasonings as a temptation to self-indulgence. She must be honest; she must not varnish, soften, norconceal. This well-meant resolution brought on hermisconstruction, and some abuse, which she bore, as it was hercustom to bear whatever was unpleasant, with mild, steady patience. She was a very sincere, and practical Christian, but the tinge ofreligious melancholy communicated a sad shade to her brief, blameless life. 

Neither Ellis nor Acton allowed herself for one moment to sinkunder want of encouragement; energy nerved the one, and enduranceupheld the other. They were both prepared to try again; I wouldfain think that hope and the sense of power were yet strong withinthem. But a great change approached; affliction came in that shapewhich to anticipate is dread; to look back on, grief. In the veryheat and burden of the day, the labourers failed over their work. 

My sister Emily first declined. The details of her illness aredeep-branded in my memory, but to dwell on them, either in thoughtor narrative, is not in my power. Never in all her life had shelingered over any task that lay before her, and she did not lingernow. She sank rapidly. She made haste to leave us. Yet, whilephysically she perished, mentally she grew stronger than we had yetknown her. Day by day, when I saw with what a front she metsuffering, I looked on her with an anguish of wonder and love. Ihave seen nothing like it; but, indeed, I have never seen herparallel in anything. Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone. The awful point was, that while full ofruth for others, on herself she had no pity; the spirit wasinexorable to the flesh; from the trembling hand, the unnervedlimbs, the faded eyes, the same service was exacted as they hadrendered in health. To stand by and witness this, and not dare toremonstrate, was a pain no words can render. 

Two cruel months of hope and fear passed painfully by, and the daycame at last when the terrors and pains of death were to beundergone by this treasure, which had grown dearer and dearer toour hearts as it wasted before our eyes. Towards the decline ofthat day, we had nothing of Emily but her mortal remains asconsumption left them. She died December 19, 1848. 

We thought this enough: but we were utterly and presumptuouslywrong. She was not buried ere Anne fell ill. She had not beencommitted to the grave a fortnight, before we received distinctintimation that it was necessary to prepare our minds to see theyounger sister go after the elder. Accordingly, she followed inthe same path with slower step, and with a patience that equalledthe other's fortitude. I have said that she was religious, and itwas by leaning on those Christian doctrines in which she firmlybelieved, that she found support through her most painful journey. I witnessed their efficacy in her latest hour and greatest trial, and must bear my testimony to the calm triumph with which theybrought her through. She died May 28, 1849. 

What more shall I say about them? I cannot and need not say muchmore. In externals, they were two unobtrusive women; a perfectlysecluded life gave them retiring manners and habits. In Emily'snature the extremes of vigour and simplicity seemed to meet. Underan unsophisticated culture, inartificial tastes, and anunpretending outside, lay a secret power and fire that might haveinformed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero; but she had noworldly wisdom; her powers were unadapted to the practical businessof life; she would fail to defend her most manifest rights, toconsult her most legitimate advantage. An interpreter ought alwaysto have stood between her and the world. Her will was not veryflexible, and it generally opposed her interest. Her temper wasmagnanimous, but warm and sudden; her spirit altogether unbending. 

Anne's character was milder and more subdued; she wanted the power, the fire, the originality of her sister, but was well endowed withquiet virtues of her own. Long-suffering, self-denying, reflective, and intelligent, a constitutional reserve andtaciturnity placed and kept her in the shade, and covered her mind, and especially her feelings, with a sort of nun-like veil, whichwas rarely lifted. Neither Emily nor Anne was learned; they had nothought of filling their pitchers at the well-spring of otherminds; they always wrote from the impulse of nature, the dictatesof intuition, and from such stores of observation as their limitedexperience had enabled them to amass. I may sum up all by saying, that for strangers they were nothing, for superficial observersless than nothing; but for those who had known them all their livesin the intimacy of close relationship, they were genuinely good andtruly great. 

This notice has been written because I felt it a sacred duty towipe the dust off their gravestones, and leave their dear namesfree from soil. 

CURRER BELLSeptember 19, 1850. 

EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION OF 'WUTHERING HEIGHTS'

I have just read over 'Wuthering Heights, ' and, for the first time, have obtained a clear glimpse of what are termed (and, perhaps, really are) its faults; have gained a definite notion of how itappears to other people--to strangers who knew nothing of theauthor; who are unacquainted with the locality where the scenes ofthe story are laid; to whom the inhabitants, the customs, thenatural characteristics of the outlying hills and hamlets in theWest Riding of Yorkshire are things alien and unfamiliar. 

To all such 'Wuthering Heights' must appear a rude and strangeproduction. The wild moors of the North of England can for themhave no interest: the language, the manners, the very dwellingsand household customs of the scattered inhabitants of thosedistricts must be to such readers in a great measureunintelligible, and--where intelligible--repulsive. Men and womenwho, perhaps, naturally very calm, and with feelings moderate indegree, and little marked in kind, have been trained from theircradle to observe the utmost evenness of manner and guardedness oflanguage, will hardly know what to make of the rough, strongutterance, the harshly manifested passions, the unbridledaversions, and headlong partialities of unlettered moorland hindsand rugged moorland squires, who have grown up untaught andunchecked, except by Mentors as harsh as themselves. A large classof readers, likewise, will suffer greatly from the introductioninto the pages of this work of words printed with all theirletters, which it has become the custom to represent by the initialand final letter only--a blank line filling the interval. I may aswell say at once that, for this circumstance, it is out of my powerto apologise; deeming it, myself, a rational plan to write words atfull length. The practice of hinting by single letters thoseexpletives with which profane and violent persons are wont togarnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, howeverwell meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does--what feeling it spares--what horror it conceals. 

With regard to the rusticity of 'Wuthering heights, ' I admit thecharge, for I feel the quality. It is rustic all through. It ismoorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath. Nor was itnatural that it should be otherwise; the author being herself anative and nursling of the moors. Doubtless, had her lot been castin a town, her writings, if she had written at all, would havepossessed another character. Even had chance or taste led her tochoose a similar subject, she would have treated it otherwise. HadEllis Bell been a lady or a gentleman accustomed to what is called'the world, ' her view of a remote and unreclaimed region, as wellas of the dwellers therein, would have differed greatly from thatactually taken by the home-bred country girl. Doubtless it wouldhave been wider--more comprehensive: whether it would have beenmore original or more truthful is not so certain. As far as thescenery and locality are concerned, it could scarcely have been sosympathetic: Ellis Bell did not describe as one whose eye andtaste alone found pleasure in the prospect; her native hills werefar more to her than a spectacle; they were what she lived in, andby, as much as the wild birds, their tenants, or as the heather, their produce. Her descriptions, then, of natural scenery are whatthey should be, and all they should be. 

Where delineation of human character is concerned, the case isdifferent. I am bound to avow that she had scarcely more practicalknowledge of the peasantry amongst whom she lived, than a nun hasof the country people who sometimes pass her convent gates. Mysister's disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstancesfavoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go tochurch or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed thethreshold of home. Though her feeling for the people round wasbenevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with veryfew exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she know them: knewtheir ways, their language, their family histories; she could hearof them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but WITH them, she rarely exchanged a word. Hence it ensued that what her mind had gathered of the realconcerning them, was too exclusively confined to those tragic andterrible traits of which, in listening to the secret annals ofevery rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receivethe impress. Her imagination, which was a spirit more sombre thansunny, more powerful than sportive, found in such traits materialwhence it wrought creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, likeCatherine. Having formed these beings, she did not know what shehad done. If the auditor of her work, when read in manuscript, shuddered under the grinding influence of natures so relentless andimplacable, of spirits so lost and fallen; if it was complainedthat the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes banishedsleep by night, and disturbed mental peace by day, Ellis Bell wouldwonder what was meant, and suspect the complainant of affectation. Had she but lived, her mind would of itself have grown like astrong tree, loftier, straighter, wider-spreading, and its maturedfruits would have attained a mellower ripeness and sunnier bloom;but on that mind time and experience alone could work: to theinfluence of other intellects it was not amenable. 

Having avowed that over much of 'Wuthering Heights' there broods 'ahorror of great darkness'; that, in its storm-heated and electricalatmosphere, we seem at times to breathe lightning: let me point tothose spots where clouded day-light and the eclipsed sun stillattest their existence. For a specimen of true benevolence andhomely fidelity, look at the character of Nelly Dean; for anexample of constancy and tenderness, remark that of Edgar Linton. (Some people will think these qualities do not shine so wellincarnate in a man as they would do in a woman, but Ellis Bellcould never be brought to comprehend this notion: nothing movedher more than any insinuation that the faithfulness and clemency, the long-suffering and loving-kindness which are esteemed virtuesin the daughters of Eve, become foibles in the sons of Adam. Sheheld that mercy and forgiveness are the divinest attributes of theGreat Being who made both man and woman, and that what clothes theGodhead in glory, can disgrace no form of feeble humanity. ) Thereis a dry saturnine humour in the delineation of old Joseph, andsome glimpses of grace and gaiety animate the younger Catherine. Nor is even the first heroine of the name destitute of a certainstrange beauty in her fierceness, or of honesty in the midst ofperverted passion and passionate perversity. 

Heathcliff, indeed, stands unredeemed; never once swerving in hisarrow-straight course to perdition, from the time when 'the littleblack-haired swarthy thing, as dark as if it came from the Devil, 'was first unrolled out of the bundle and set on its feet in thefarmhouse kitchen, to the hour when Nelly Dean found the grim, stalwart corpse laid on its back in the panel-enclosed bed, withwide-gazing eyes that seemed 'to sneer at her attempt to closethem, and parted lips and sharp white teeth that sneered too. '

Heathcliff betrays one solitary human feeling, and that is NOT hislove for Catherine; which is a sentiment fierce and inhuman: apassion such as might boil and glow in the bad essence of some evilgenius; a fire that might form the tormented centre--the ever-suffering soul of a magnate of the infernal world: and by itsquenchless and ceaseless ravage effect the execution of the decreewhich dooms him to carry Hell with him wherever he wanders. No;the single link that connects Heathcliff with humanity is hisrudely-confessed regard for Hareton Earnshaw--the young man whom hehas ruined; and then his half-implied esteem for Nelly Dean. Thesesolitary traits omitted, we should say he was child neither ofLascar nor gipsy, but a man's shape animated by demon life--aGhoul--an Afreet. 

Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know: thewriter who possesses the creative gift owns something of which heis not always master--something that, at times, strangely wills andworks for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, andto rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie insubjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, therecomes a time when it will no longer consent to 'harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the furrow'--when it 'laughs at themultitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver'--when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, aTisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as Fate orInspiration direct. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you--the nominal artist--your share in it has been to work passivelyunder dictates you neither delivered nor could question--that wouldnot be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at yourcaprice. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World willblame you, who almost as little deserve blame. 

'Wuthering Heights' was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials. The statuary found a granite block on asolitary moor; gazing thereon, he saw how from the crag might beelicited a head, savage, swart, sinister; a form moulded with atleast one element of grandeur--power. He wrought with a rudechisel, and from no model but the vision of his meditations. Withtime and labour, the crag took human shape; and there it standscolossal, dark, and frowning, half statue, half rock: in theformer sense, terrible and goblin-like; in the latter, almostbeautiful, for its colouring is of mellow grey, and moorland mossclothes it; and heath, with its blooming bells and balmy fragrance, grows faithfully close to the giant's foot. 

CURRER BELL.