Some one said to her in London, "You know, you and I, Miss Bronte, have both written naughty books!" She dwelt much on this;and, as if it weighed on her mind, took an opportunity to ask Mrs. Smith, as she would have asked a mother--if she had not been motherless from earliest childhood--whether, indeed, there was anything so wrong in "Jane Eyre."I do not deny for myself the existence of coarseness here and there in her works, otherwise so entirely noble. I only ask those who read them to consider her life,--which has been openly laid bare before them,--and to say how it could be otherwise. She saw few men; and among these few were one or two with whom she had been acquainted since early girlhood,--who had shown her much friendliness and kindness,--through whose family she had received many pleasures,--for whose intellect she had a great respect,--but who talked before her, if not to her with as little reticence as Rochester talked to Jane Eyre. Take this in connection with her poor brother's sad life, and the out-spoken people among whom she lived,--remember her strong feeling of the duty of representing life as it really is, not as it ought to be,--and then do her justice for all that she was, and all that she would have been (had God spared her), rather than censure her because circumstances forced her to touch pitch, as it were, and by it her hand was for a moment defiled. It was but skin-deep.
Every change in her life was purifying her; it hardly could raise her. Again I cry, "If she had but lived!"The misunderstanding with Miss Martineau on account of "Villette," was the cause of bitter regret to Miss Bronte. Her woman's nature had been touched, as she thought, with insulting misconception; and she had dearly loved the person who had thus unconsciously wounded her. It was but in the January just past that she had written as follows, in reply to a friend, the tenor of whose letter we may guess from this answer:--"I read attentively all you say about Miss Martineau; the sincerity and constancy of your solicitude touch me very much; Ishould grieve to neglect or oppose your advice, and yet I do not feel it would be right to give Miss Martineau up entirely. There is in her nature much that is very noble; hundreds have forsaken her, more, I fear, in the apprehension that their fair names may suffer, if seen in connection with hers, than from any pure convictions, such as you suggest, of harm consequent on her fatal tenets. With these fair-weather friends I cannot bear to rank;and for her sin, is it not one of those of which God and not man must judge?
"To speak the truth, my dear Miss ----, I believe, if you were in my place, and knew Miss Martineau as I do,--if you had shared with me the proofs of her genuine kindliness, and had seen how she secretly suffers from abandonment,--you would be the last to give her up; you would separate the sinner from the sin, and feel as if the right lay rather in quietly adhering to her in her strait, while that adherence is unfashionable and unpopular, than in turning on her your back when the world sets the example. Ibelieve she is one of those whom opposition and desertion make obstinate in error; while patience and tolerance touch her deeply and keenly, and incline her to ask of her own heart whether the course she has been pursuing may not possibly be a faulty course."Kindly and faithful words! which Miss Martineau never knew of; to be repaid in words more grand and tender, when Charlotte lay deaf and cold by her dead sisters. In spite of their short sorrowful misunderstanding, they were a pair of noble women and faithful friends.
I turn to a pleasanter subject. While she was in London, Miss Bronte had seen Lawrence's portrait of Mr. Thackeray, and admired it extremely. Her first words, after she had stood before it some time in silence, were, "And there came up a Lion out of Judah!"The likeness was by this time engraved, and Mr. Smith sent her a copy of it.
To G. SMITH, ESQ.
"Haworth, Feb. 26th, 1853.
"My dear Sir,--At a late hour yesterday evening, I had the honour of receiving, at Haworth Parsonage, a distinguished guest, none other than W. M. Thackeray, Esq. Mindful of the rites of hospitality, I hung him up in state this morning. He looks superb in his beautiful, tasteful gilded gibbet. For companion he has the Duke of Wellington, (do you remember giving me that picture?)and for contrast and foil Richmond's portrait of an unworthy individual, who, in such society, must be name-less. Thackeray looks away from the latter character with a grand scorn, edifying to witness. I wonder if the giver of these gifts will ever see them on the walls where they now hang; it pleases me to fancy that one day he may. My father stood for a quarter of an hour this morning examining the great man's picture. The conclusion of his survey was, that he thought it a puzzling head; if he had known nothing previously of the original's character; he could not have read it in his features. I wonder at this. To me the broad brow seems to express intellect. Certain lines about the nose and cheek, betray the satirist and cynic; the mouth indicates a child-like simplicity--perhaps even a degree of irresoluteness, inconsistency--weakness in short, but a weakness not unamiable. The engraving seems to me very good. A certain not quite Christian expression--'not to put too fine a point upon it'--an expression of spite, most vividly marked in the original, is here softened, and perhaps a little--a very little--of the power has escaped in this ameliorating process. Did it strike you thus?"Miss Bronte was in much better health during this winter of 1852-3, than she had been the year before.