The Immortal Sisters

A Family of Genius

On an evening of a day in the year 1820, the people of the village of "Haworth"—in the north of England—were awaiting the arrival of the Reverend "Patrick Brontë," the church's new pastor, together with his family. And in that modest house, crouched among thick clouds of fog, with the graveyard surrounding it before and behind and the marshes on every side, the five girls grew up with their brother "Branwell": loneliness and hardship, silence and gloom—this was what hung over "Haworth."

And the girls awoke, at the dawn of a dreadful day, to a calamity that flooded those keen young hearts with grief and shook them to the depths, when their mother died—after a year—and oblivion enfolded her...

Alas for This Childhood:

When would it find noble tenderness to enfold it like the falling of the dew? Who would toil that it might be happy?! Who would accept privation that it might be content?! Who would spread the wing of mercy and protection over the little ones, now that the mother's phantom had vanished as the phantoms of light vanish after sunset, while this stern father had none of that fatherly affection which surrounds childhood with an overflowing love—a love that in many men has soared and poured forth until it attains the strength of both loves together? ..

Those small hearts had been robbed of the light of companions, and here they were being robbed of the light of motherhood; but heaven—merciful and bountiful—lit them with brands of an immortal radiance, that they might be united in their sorrows, their hopes, and their longings as a single soul, and that those geniuses might unfold—from the folds of pain—lofty and luminous, raising their lamp aloft for the generations...

A Tender Childhood

At this early age the girls took up the work of the house, an aged servant helping them, though the eldest of them had not passed her eighth year. In this house they received an ample share of mental and domestic training from their father and their aunt, Miss "Branwell." And when they were sent to the "Cowan Bridge" school, malnutrition, harshness, and poverty roused the claws of disease—the deadly consumption—which afterward overtook them all and carried off the two eldest sisters (Maria and Elizabeth); so the three who remained returned to "Haworth," and after a while "Charlotte" enrolled at the "Roe Head" school. There her literary gifts shone forth! Miss "Wooler," her schoolmistress, marveled when she saw the pupil who fell short in arithmetic, geography, and grammar filling page after page with stories of the utmost splendor, while she murmured: "I have written twenty-two stories at home..."

One day "Charlotte" became a teacher at Miss "Wooler's" school. But she loathed teaching and felt a strong pull toward literature. So she turned, with a few poems of her own composing, to the writer "Robert Southey," in hope of finding from him an encouragement that would fulfill her ambitions; and he answered her, saying: "Literature cannot be a profession for woman, and it ought not to be." She then had recourse to the great poet "Wordsworth," but was not blessed with a satisfying reply; so she resigned herself to working as a household governess in a family of middling means, and her sister "Emily"—the family being in grinding poverty—was likewise compelled to take this path, only for the two to give it up after a while and return—their delicate feelings wounded—to "Haworth," with the clouds of failure closing over their two poets' hearts...

Struggle and Torment

And "Charlotte"—the eldest of the sisters—felt the burden of life wearing down her frail strength, and "Emily" strove at her side, sharing the harshness of work, of poverty, and of privation. But does struggle solve all the problems of life? No... Then let the two of them turn toward a path that would secure the family's livelihood; and here was a hope glimmering: let her go to Brussels to learn languages, and her sister likewise, to plant her foot firmly in letters and the arts, and let them return afterward to open a modern school in "Haworth."

And at the "Brussels" institute, the pupil of twenty-six came to hold a cherished place with her teacher, "Monsieur Héger," and she in her turn set him, in her own soul, upon a pedestal of sanctity! He unveiled to her a teeming world of philosophy, science, and art, and enabled her to gain a great measure of human experience; so she inclined toward him, though he was married, with five children, and a man of severity. Or do such bonds stand in the way of the meeting of two souls tied together by unbreakable cords of the heart's affection, harmony of thought, and kinship of taste? ...

"Charlotte" lived near her teacher for two years, a sea of conflicting emotions drowning her now in contentment, now in torment.. And torment overwhelmed her when she returned—after completing her studies—to Haworth; she took up the pen to write to her teacher, saying:

Sir: "The needy do not ask for much to sustain them in life; the crumbs that fall from the tables of the fortunate suffice them... And so I, likewise, need but a little of the affection of those I love." And she ended her letter with these outpourings: "A person suffers in silence so long as he has the strength to endure; but when that strength deserts him, he sends forth his complaint free and unfettered..." And since writing to him breathed into her rest and peace, she wrote to him a second time and a third, and won no answer! At last... she received from him a brief letter, and she wrote back to him, saying: "Your letter was food to me for six whole months, and now I am in need of another! You will send it to me—not from the motive of affection, for you do not feel that sentiment, but from the motive of pity, because you have a merciful heart that would not condemn a human being to prolonged torment when you are able to lift it from him by granting him a few minutes..." Then she ceased writing, lest passion consume her—to pour out her torment instead into an immortal novel!

Troubles and Sorrows

And Charlotte sank anew into her sorrows and her troubles. Here was her father all but losing his sight; there the only brother, "Branwell," being struck down by disease and drink together; and there was Emily—who bore her sister a deep love—her heart filled with grief and wasted by it; sorrow had pierced it through and worked its way into her inmost being—only to be transmuted into immortal, heaven-sent raptures and gleams, whose rays reach out across time, bearing the name "Wuthering Heights"!

How Emily doted upon "Branwell" and watched over him!? How she forgave him his caprices and favored him with pure love through offense and contentment alike—he who possessed literary and artistic gifts that were never destined to unfold!? All this is revealed in a poem of hers lamenting him:

"Yes, some may hate you and others despise you, and your beloved name may be effaced from the memory of some; but my sorrowing heart will remain faithful to your memory; it will weep in you the departed hopes, and the genius buried beneath the layers of the earth..."

And "Emily" folded herself about her sorrows, weaving them into poems—how it pained her that anyone should read them! And why? They were for her alone. Were they not the very melting of that wounded heart, the channel of her sorrows and her longings and her immortal love, as she used to say!?

Those poems, together with those far-off spots and the hills she used to roam, were her sole source of consolation. Were they not the homeland where hearts beat and memories meet!? She saw in them—as Charlotte says—a heavenly paradise; it is as though, with "Elizabeth Browning," she were communing with them in a sweeping longing: "O hills of my country: do you know what I endure for your sake!? How I burn and am consumed in you, O my beloved hills!? And in the darkness of night, do you feel the longing and the yearnings that blaze in my breast toward you!?"

And weeks passed after the death of "Branwell," and "Emily" followed him down the dark road; and after her the latent disease showed itself in "Anne," that youngest sister who was likewise a woman of letters and a poet, though she did not attain her sister's rank; and all she left of literary works were her novel "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" and a few poems in the sisters' volume of verse.

Charlotte took her to the seashore in the hope that she might find a cure there for her ailment—but in vain!... And on the evening of a day—thirty days after "Emily's" death—Charlotte stood upon the shore, her head bowed, imploring in deep sorrow, for the last of the sisters—laid out upon the bed of death—a greeting of farewell! And Charlotte came back to Haworth, sorrows storming about her. Where now was "Emily," that tender girl who tasted happiness only twice: the day their volume of poems was published, and the day her enduring work, "Wuthering Heights," appeared?

And let us see now: how did the sisters turn to the writing of novels after that failure in the publishing of their volume of verse, in the year 1846? Is it not strange that only two copies of it should have sold at the time, and that it should have been sent back from one publisher to another—when Emily has since been counted among the greatest poetesses of the nineteenth century!?

Failure renewed their resolve and clothed them with strength, and they threw themselves, with all the intelligence and genius that was in them, into the writing of novels; and the daughter of the "Yorkshire" parson, Charlotte—and she it was who had fostered in her sister the spirit of perseverance and work—swept the whole European continent into admiration with her book "Jane Eyre"...

After it she published two more novels of hers, "Shirley" in 1849 and "Villette" in 1852, and the two are a record of her sister's life and of her own: the first character in Shirley is "Emily," while the story of "Villette" is an account of her own life in Brussels...

Yet her fame, which spread to every horizon, rests upon her novel "Jane Eyre." Its opening chapters draw a speaking portrait of her torment as a student and a governess, and the final chapter, which turns upon her love for Mr. "Rochester," is counted as coming from the very heart of reality, unfolding in a splendid sequence and in an eloquent, captivating style. The author was the target of a campaign of harsh criticism at the time for her bold frankness, which has now come to be considered quite an ordinary matter! And behold: more than a hundred years have passed since the appearance of "Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights" in the year 1847, and they remain a fountainhead of lofty literature, never ceasing to water every heart and to gladden every soul... Did they not lay bare the subtlest of human stirrings, with deep feeling and rare intelligence?

Yes, they gave the novel a lofty direction when they turned it upon human emotion and displayed it in splendid pictures in which tangible reality was bound to spacious imagination—to such a degree that one historian of literature said: "The success of the greater part of the fiction of the nineteenth century is indebted to the novels of these sisters, for the power of feeling with which it abounds..."

And is their life, too, not a living lesson for the generations? These women who wrestled with misery and sickness, with loneliness and then privation? Charlotte fought the tempest of life for a span of thirty years. She fought it with the immortal values—with courage, faith, and hope—and prevailed over it, life being unending struggle... And when she took refuge in rest, in the shelter of a merciful husband, the specter of death came round to her a few months after her marriage, before she had completed the fortieth year of her life... The garden withered, the spring ran dry, and the sanctuary was left empty of its worshipper, when the winds of March 1855 blew, and in their folds the last breaths of the sisters melted away—breaths that had passed into the universe with the lights of thought and the fragrance of the spirit, to settle—in their loftiest signs—as a meaning in men's souls, a lesson in struggle, and a book in immortality...