Chapter III. Chapter I.
A rainy day in the early A rainy day in the early childhood of Catherine childhood of Jane Eyre, Earnshaw, as told by herself. as told by herself.
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... All day had been flooding There was no possibility of with rain; we could not go to taking a walk that day, ... church. the cold winter wind had brought with it a rain so penetrating that further outdoor exercise was out of the question.
Hindley [Branwell Brontë] and Eliza, John [Branwell Brontë], his wife [? Sister Maria] basked and Georgiana were now clustered downstairs before a comfortable round their mamma [Aunt fire. Branwell] in the drawing-room ... by the fireside ... looking perfectly happy.
Heathcliffe [Method I., Me she had dispensed from interchange of the sexes. In joining the group.... A small the childhood of Heathcliffe breakfast-room adjoined the Charlotte often portrays drawing-room; I slipped in herself], myself, and the ... there, ... I possessed myself of ploughboy were commanded to take a volume, ... I mounted into the our prayer-books and mount ... window-seat, ... and having on a sack ... [in the garret. drawn the ... curtain nearly They go downstairs again]. close, I was shrined in ... retirement.... With ... [a book] "You forget you have a master in on my knee I was ... happy; ... me," says the tyrant [Hindley: but interruption ... came too Branwell Brontë]. soon. The ... door opened: "Boh!" cried the voice of John ... We made ourselves ... snug Reed [Branwell Brontë]. ... in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our "It is well I drew the curtain," pinafores together and hung them thought I, ... but Eliza ... up for a curtain, when in comes said: "She is in the Joseph.[19]... He tears down my window-seat, ... Jack handiwork [the curtain], boxes [Branwell]." my ears, and ... thrust [a book] upon us.... I took my ... volume ... and hurled it into the dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book.
Hindley [Branwell Brontë] I came out immediately, for I hurried up from his paradise on trembled at the idea of being the hearth, and seizing ... us dragged forth by the said Jack ... hurled both into the [Branwell Brontë]. back-kitchen. "What were you doing behind the curtain?" he asked. "I'll teach you to rummage my bookshelves, for they _are_ mine; all the house belongs to me, or soon will do.... Go ... by the door."
I did so, ... but ... I saw him lift the book and stand in the act to hurl it.... The volume was flung.... He ran ... at me.... I saw in him a tyrant.... Then Mrs. Reed [Aunt Branwell] subjoined: "Take her to the red-room."...
... How little did I dream that ... All John Reed's [Branwell Hindley [Branwell Brontë] would Brontë's] violent tyrannies ... ever make me cry so.... My head turned in my disturbed mind.... aches, till I cannot keep it on My head still ached ... no one the pillow; and still I can't reproved John [Branwell].... How give over. all my brain was in tumult.... I could not answer the question _why_ I thus suffered; now at the distance of--I will not say how many years--I see it clearly.
Thus we see the "volume-hurling" incident with which John Reed is associated had its origin in some incident connected with Charlotte Brontë's childhood and her brother Branwell. As Catherine, Charlotte Brontë calls Hindley "a tyrant" in this connection, and as Jane Eyre she calls John Reed "a tyrant" here. Branwell, as John Reed, is made to tell Jane in connection with this incident that "all this house belongs to me, or will do"; and as Hindley Earnshaw he tells his sister Catherine, "You forget you have a master here." By Charlotte Brontë's Method II., altering the age of a character portrayed, Branwell is represented in the _Wuthering Heights_ scene as a man in years. Without further appeal it was likely enough that Hindley Earnshaw, Catherine's brother, was drawn for Charlotte Brontë's brother, seeing Catherine was Charlotte. Herewith we find an explanation for a fact Mr. Francis A. Leyland has strongly emphasized in his work _The Brontë Family_, that in _Wuthering Heights_ incidents (the carving-knife incident, etc.) and epithets known by his intimates to have been common to Branwell Brontë are associated with Hindley Earnshaw in the days of his moral deterioration. That deterioration is reflected in the portrayal of the latter end of John Reed in _Jane Eyre_; in _Wuthering Heights_ it is given in detail. As for Emily Brontë, she always liked and commiserated with Branwell Brontë.[20]
I hope the attempt to interfere with this tradition recently has no relation to the fact that I briefly stated in my _Fortnightly Review_ article that John Reed and Hindley Earnshaw were one and the same. It is plain to see that if Emily really liked Branwell, as people stated who gleaned from hearsay, she could not have portrayed him as Hindley Earnshaw. But a wrong estimate of the nature of the evidence I promised to bring has been formed if it were thought I should base my book upon such a point. It is enough that Charlotte Brontë's private letters regarding Branwell are quite in agreement with her own harsh portrayals of him in her _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_.
It is interesting to recall Branwell avowed he, and not Emily, wrote _Wuthering Heights_. This fact and the association of Branwell Brontë incidents and epithets with the book induced Mr. Leyland to advocate Branwell's authorship. _The Key to the Brontë Works_ shows the absurdness of such a claim. Mr. Leyland suggested Branwell may have collaborated with Emily; and he professed to discover a break in the style. I find, however, that though there were violent psychical fluctuations in the mood of the writer of _Wuthering Heights_, the book is throughout the work of Charlotte Brontë. This may be proved alone by the Chapter III., with which I now deal: it is the "key" chapter, and is, so to speak, a microcosm of _Wuthering Heights_, as the reader will perceive by help of my index. Whosoever was the writer of this third chapter wrote the whole of _Wuthering Heights_, and we see it was Currer Bell.
By Charlotte Brontë's Method I., interchange of the sexes, the interloper Jane in the early chapters of _Jane Eyre_ and the interloper Heathcliffe in the early chapters of _Wuthering Heights_ become one and the same; and Hindley's tyrannizing over Heathcliffe is John Reed's (Branwell Brontë's) tyrannizing over Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë). Again, by Method I., interchange of the sexes, old Joseph, in Charlotte's _Wuthering Heights_ version of the rainy day incident in her childhood, serves the part of the servant Tabitha Aykroyd, for whom Bessie in the _Jane Eyre_ version of the rainy day incident was drawn. (See "Joseph" and his bit of garden, _Wuthering Heights_, Chapter XXXIII.; also my footnote on page 47.) Thus Charlotte Brontë as Catherine tells us that when she was banished from the comfortable fire "Joseph" sermonizes, and that she hoped he might give "a short homily for his own sake"; and in the scene in _Jane Eyre_ drawn from the same incident Jane was left to Bessie, who "supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour's length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof."
Catherine's story of the rainy day in _Wuthering Heights_ was written by her in childhood on "a 'red-hot' Methodist's tract." Hence it is interesting to read Charlotte Brontë's words in _Villette_, where as Lucy Snowe she says she had "once read when a child certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts seasoned with ... excitation to fanaticism." As Caroline Helstone[21] in _Shirley_, Charlotte tells us she had read "some mad Methodist magazines, full of miracles and apparitions, of preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticism; ... from these faded flowers Caroline had in her childhood extracted the honey--they were tasteless to her now." Let the reader compare Charlotte Brontë's reference to Briar Chapel and the shouts, yells, ejaculations, frantic cries of "the assembly" in Chapter IX. of _Shirley_ with the references in Chapter III. of _Wuthering Heights_ to the frantic zeal of "the assembly" of the chapel of Gimmerden Sough. It will be at once recognized that the former is but the extension of the other, amplified by the same hand.
Thus, in the light of the name Branderham ("Brander'em," from "brander," a hot iron over a fire) for the name of the zealous Rev. Jabes Branderham,[22] of the chapel of Gimmerden Sough, of _Wuthering Heights_, we see a connection with the play Charlotte Brontë makes upon "burning and fire" in the hymn sung at Briar Chapel in Chapter IX. of _Shirley_:--
"For every fight Is dreadful and loud-- The warrior's delight Is slaughter and blood; His foes overturning Till all shall expire-- And this is with burning And fuel and fire."
In the rainy day incident Charlotte Brontë as Catherine vowed "she hated a good book," and this rebellion against the thrusting upon her of religious "lumber," as she calls it in _Wuthering Heights_, was a characteristic of her childhood shown also in the "Jane Eyre and Mr. Brocklehurst" incident, where the latter asks--
"And the Psalms? I hope you like them?"
"No, sir," replied Jane.
"No? Oh, shocking!"
At heart, however, Charlotte Brontë was a true Christian, though disliking excessive zealousness in the demonstrations of the members of any church. Read what M. Emanuel says in Chap. XXXVI. of _Villette_; the last paragraph. Lockwood tells us in the incident connected with Catherine's diary that "a glare of white letters started from the dark as vivid as spectres--the air swarmed with Catherines." This, Charlotte Brontë's idea of spectral writing running in the air, occurs in Chap. XV. of _Jane Eyre_, where Rochester speaks of a phantom hag (see Charlotte Brontë's phantom hag in Chap. XII. of _Wuthering Heights_), who "wrote in the air a memento which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front." Says Lockwood in _Wuthering Heights_, continuing:--"An immediate interest kindled within me for the unknown Catherine, and I began ... to decipher her hieroglyphics"--the diary.