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Title: The Garotters

Author: William D. Howells

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF ELLIS AND ACTON BELL

It has been thought that all the works published under the names of Currer,
Ellis,
and Acton Bell were,
in reality,
the production of one person.

This mistake I endeavoured
to rectify by a few words of disclaimer prefixed
to the third edition of
'Jane Eyre.'

These,
too,
it appears,
failed
to gain general credence,
and now,
on the occasion of a reprint of
'Wuthering Heights'
and
'Agnes Grey,'
I am advised distinctly
to state how the case really stands.

Indeed,
I feel myself that it is time the obscurity attending those two names--Ellis and Acton--was done away.

The little mystery,
which formerly yielded some harmless pleasure,
has lost its interest;
circumstances are changed.

It becomes,
then,
my duty
to explain briefly the origin and authorship of the books written by Currer,
Ellis,
and Acton Bell.

About five years ago,
my two sisters and myself,
after a somewhat prolonged period of separation,
found ourselves reunited,
and at home.

Resident in a remote district,
where education had made little progress,
and where,
consequently,
there was no inducement
to seek social intercourse beyond our own domestic circle,
we were wholly 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 childhood upwards,
lay in attempts at literary composition;
formerly we used
to show each other what we wrote,
but of late years this habit of communication and consultation had been discontinued;
hence it ensued,
that we were mutually ignorant of the progress we might respectively 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 was not surprised,
knowing that she could and did write verse:

I looked it over,
and something more than surprise seized me--a deep conviction that these were not common effusions,
nor at all like the poetry women generally write.

I thought them condensed and terse,
vigorous and genuine.

To my ear they had also a peculiar music--wild,
melancholy,
and elevating.

My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative character,
nor one on the recesses of whose mind and feelings even those nearest and dearest
to her could,
with impunity,
intrude unlicensed;
it took hours
to reconcile her
to the discovery I had made,
and days
to persuade her that such poems merited publication.

I knew,
however,
that a mind like hers could not be without some latent spark of honourable ambition,
and refused
to be discouraged in my attempts
to fan that spark
to flame.

Meantime,
my younger sister quietly produced some of her own compositions,
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 pathos of their own.

We had very early cherished the dream of one day becoming authors.

This dream,
never relinquished even when distance divided and absorbing tasks occupied us,
now suddenly acquired strength and consistency:

it took the character of a resolve.

We agreed
to arrange a small selection of our poems,
and,
if possible,
to get them printed.

Averse
to personal publicity,
we veiled our own names under those of Currer,
Ellis,
and Acton Bell;
the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine,
while we did not like
to declare ourselves women,
because--without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called
'feminine'--we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable
to be looked on
with prejudice;
we had noticed how critics sometimes use
for their chastisement the weapon of personality,
and
for their reward,
a flattery,
which is not true praise.

The bringing out of our little book was hard work.

As was
to be expected,
neither we nor our poems were at all wanted;
but
for this we had been prepared at the outset;
though inexperienced ourselves,
we had read the experience of others.

The great puzzle lay in the difficulty of getting answers of any kind from the publishers
to whom we applied.

Being greatly harassed by this obstacle,
I ventured
to apply
to the Messrs.

Chambers,
of Edinburgh,
for a word of advice;
THEY may have forgotten the circumstance,
but _I_ have not,
for from them I received a brief and business-like,
but civil and sensible reply,
on which we acted,
and at last made a way.

The book was printed:

it is scarcely known,
and all of it that merits
to be known are the poems of Ellis Bell.

The fixed conviction I held,
and hold,
of the worth of these poems has not indeed received the confirmation of much favourable criticism;
but I must retain it notwithstanding.

Ill-success failed
to crush us:

the mere effort
to succeed had given a wonderful zest
to existence;
it must be pursued.

We each set
to work on a prose tale:

Ellis Bell produced
'Wuthering Heights,'
Acton Bell
'Agnes Grey,'
and Currer Bell also wrote a narrative in one volume.

These MSS.

were perseveringly obtruded upon 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 terms somewhat impoverishing
to the two authors;
Currer Bell's book found acceptance nowhere,
nor any acknowledgment of merit,
so that something like the chill of despair began
to invade her heart.

As a forlorn hope,
she tried one publishing house more--Messrs.

Smith,
Elder and Co.

Ere long,
in a much shorter space than that on which experience had taught her
to calculate--there came a letter,
which she opened in the dreary expectation of finding two hard,
hopeless lines,
intimating that Messrs.

Smith,
Elder and Co.

'were not disposed
to publish the MS. ,'
and,
instead,
she took out of the envelope a letter of two pages.

She read it trembling.

It declined,
indeed,
to publish that tale,
for business reasons,
but it discussed its merits and demerits so courteously,
so considerately,
in a spirit so rational,
with a discrimination so enlightened,
that this very refusal cheered the author better than a 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 working while the one-volume tale was plodding its weary round in London:

in three weeks I sent it off;
friendly and skilful hands took it in.

This was in the commencement of September,
1847;
it came out before the close of October following,
while
'Wuthering Heights'
and
'Agnes Grey,'
my sisters'
works,
which had already been in the press
for months,
still lingered under a different management.

They appeared at last.

Critics failed
to do them justice.

The immature but very real powers revealed in
'Wuthering Heights'
were scarcely recognised;
its import and nature were misunderstood;
the identity of its author was misrepresented;
it was said that this was an earlier and ruder attempt of the same pen which had produced
'Jane Eyre.'

Unjust and grievous error! We laughed at it at first,
but I deeply lament it now.

Hence,
I fear,
arose a prejudice against the book.

That writer who could attempt
to palm off an inferior and immature production under cover of one successful effort,
must indeed be unduly eager after the secondary and sordid result of authorship,
and pitiably indifferent
to its true and honourable meed.

If reviewers and the public truly believed this,
no wonder that they looked darkly on the cheat.

Yet I must not be understood
to make these things subject
for reproach or complaint;
I dare not do so;
respect
for my sister's memory forbids me.

By her any such querulous manifestation would have been regarded as an unworthy and offensive weakness.

It is my duty,
as well as my pleasure,
to acknowledge one exception
to the general rule of criticism.

One writer,
endowed
with the keen vision and fine sympathies of genius,
has discerned the real nature of
'Wuthering Heights,'
and has,
with equal accuracy,
noted its beauties and touched on its faults.

Too often do reviewers remind us of the mob of Astrologers,
Chaldeans,
and Soothsayers gathered before the
'writing on the wall,'
and unable
to read the characters or make known the interpretation.

We have a right
to rejoice when a true seer comes at last,
some man in whom is an excellent spirit,
to whom have been given light,
wisdom,
and understanding;
who can accurately read the
'Mene,
Mene,
Tekel,
Upharsin'
of an original mind
(however unripe,
however inefficiently cultured and partially expanded that mind may be);
and who can say
with confidence,
'This is the interpretation thereof.

Yet even the writer
to whom I allude shares the mistake about the authorship,
and does me the injustice
to suppose that there was equivoque in my former rejection of this honour
(as an honour I regard it).

May I assure him that I would scorn in this and in every other case
to deal in equivoque;
I believe language
to have been given us
to make our meaning clear,
and not
to wrap it in dishonest doubt?

'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,'
by Acton Bell,
had likewise an unfavourable reception.

At this I cannot wonder.

The choice of subject was an entire mistake.

Nothing less congruous
with the writer's nature could be conceived.

The motives which dictated this choice were pure,
but,
I think,
slightly morbid.

She had,
in the course of her life,
been called on
to contemplate,
near at hand,
and
for a long time,
the terrible effects of talents misused and 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 a duty
to reproduce every detail
(of course
with fictitious characters,
incidents,
and situations),
as a warning
to others.

She hated her work,
but would pursue it.

When reasoned
with on the subject,
she regarded such reasonings as a temptation
to self- indulgence.

She must be honest;
she must not varnish,
soften,
nor conceal.

This well-meant resolution brought on her misconstruction,
and some abuse,
which she bore,
as it was her custom
to bear whatever was unpleasant,
with mild,
steady patience.

She was a very sincere,
and practical Christian,
but the tinge of religious melancholy communicated a sad shade
to her brief,
blameless life.

Neither Ellis nor Acton allowed herself
for one moment
to sink under want of encouragement;
energy nerved the one,
and endurance upheld the other.

They were both prepared
to try again;
I would fain think that hope and the sense of power were yet strong within them.

But a great change approached;
affliction came in that shape which
to anticipate is dread;
to look back on,
grief.

In the very heat and burden of the day,
the labourers failed over their work.

My sister Emily first declined.

The details of her illness are deep-branded in my memory,
but
to dwell on them,
either in thought or narrative,
is not in my power.

Never in all her life had she lingered over any task that lay before her,
and she did not linger now.

She sank rapidly.

She made haste
to leave us.

Yet,
while physically she perished,
mentally she grew stronger than we had yet known her.

Day by day,
when I saw
with what a front she met suffering,
I looked on her
with an anguish of wonder and love.

I have seen nothing like it;
but,
indeed,
I have never seen her parallel in anything.

Stronger than a man,
simpler than a child,
her nature stood alone.

The awful point was,
that while full of ruth
for others,
on herself she had no pity;
the spirit was inexorable
to the flesh;
from the trembling hand,
the unnerved limbs,
the faded eyes,
the same service was exacted as they had rendered in health.

To stand by and witness this,
and not dare
to remonstrate,
was a pain no words can render.

Two cruel months of hope and fear passed painfully by,
and the day came at last when the terrors and pains of death were
to be undergone by this treasure,
which had grown dearer and dearer
to our hearts as it wasted before our eyes.

Towards the decline of that day,
we had nothing of Emily but her mortal remains as consumption left them.

She died December 19,
1848.

We thought this enough:

but we were utterly and presumptuously wrong.

She was not buried ere Anne fell ill.

She had not been committed
to the grave a fortnight,
before we received distinct intimation that it was necessary
to prepare our minds
to see the younger sister go after the elder.

Accordingly,
she followed in the same path
with slower step,
and
with a patience that equalled the other's fortitude.

I have said that she was religious,
and it was by leaning on those Christian doctrines in which she firmly believed,
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 they brought her through.

She died May 28,
1849.

What more shall I say about them?

I cannot and need not say much more.

In externals,
they were two unobtrusive women;
a perfectly secluded life gave them retiring manners and habits.

In Emily's nature the extremes of vigour and simplicity seemed
to meet.

Under an unsophisticated culture,
inartificial tastes,
and an unpretending outside,
lay a secret power and fire that might have informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero;
but she had no worldly wisdom;
her powers were unadapted
to the practical business of life;
she would fail
to defend her most manifest rights,
to consult her most legitimate advantage.

An interpreter ought always
to have stood between her and the world.

Her will was not very flexible,
and it generally opposed her interest.

Her temper was magnanimous,
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
with quiet virtues of her own.

Long-suffering,
self-denying,
reflective,
and intelligent,
a constitutional reserve and taciturnity placed and kept her in the shade,
and covered her mind,
and especially her feelings,
with a sort of nun-like veil,
which was rarely lifted.

Neither Emily nor Anne was learned;
they had no thought of filling their pitchers at the well-spring of other minds;
they always wrote from the impulse of nature,
the dictates of intuition,
and from such stores of observation as their limited experience had enabled them
to amass.

I may sum up all by saying,
that
for strangers they were nothing,
for superficial observers less than nothing;
but
for those who had known them all their lives in the intimacy of close relationship,
they were genuinely good and truly great.

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

CURRER BELL September 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 it appears
to other people--to strangers who knew nothing of the author;
who are unacquainted
with the locality where the scenes of the story are laid;
to whom the inhabitants,
the customs,
the natural characteristics of the outlying hills and hamlets in the West Riding of Yorkshire are things alien and unfamiliar.

To all such
'Wuthering Heights'
must appear a rude and strange production.

The wild moors of the North of England can
for them have no interest:

the language,
the manners,
the very dwellings and household customs of the scattered inhabitants of those districts must be
to such readers in a great measure unintelligible,
and--where intelligible--repulsive.

Men and women who,
perhaps,
naturally very calm,
and
with feelings moderate in degree,
and little marked in kind,
have been trained from their cradle
to observe the utmost evenness of manner and guardedness of language,
will hardly know what
to make of the rough,
strong utterance,
the harshly manifested passions,
the unbridled aversions,
and headlong partialities of unlettered moorland hinds and rugged moorland squires,
who have grown up untaught and unchecked,
except by Mentors as harsh as themselves.

A large class of readers,
likewise,
will suffer greatly from the introduction into the pages of this work of words printed
with all their letters,
which it has become the custom
to represent by the initial and final letter only--a blank line filling the interval.

I may as well say at once that,
for this circumstance,
it is out of my power
to apologise;
deeming it,
myself,
a rational plan
to write words at full length.

The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives
with which profane and violent persons are wont
to garnish their discourse,
strikes me as a proceeding which,
however well 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 the charge,
for I feel the quality.

It is rustic all through.

It is moorish,
and wild,
and knotty as a root of heath.

Nor was it natural that it should be otherwise;
the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors.

Doubtless,
had her lot been cast in a town,
her writings,
if she had written at all,
would have possessed another character.

Even had chance or taste led her
to choose a similar subject,
she would have treated it otherwise.

Had Ellis Bell been a lady or a gentleman accustomed
to what is called
'the world,'
her view of a remote and unreclaimed region,
as well as of the dwellers therein,
would have differed greatly from that actually taken by the home-bred country girl.

Doubtless it would have been wider--more comprehensive:

whether it would have been more original or more truthful is not so certain.

As far as the scenery and locality are concerned,
it could scarcely have been so sympathetic:

Ellis Bell did not describe as one whose eye and taste alone found pleasure in the prospect;
her native hills were far more
to her than a spectacle;
they were what she lived in,
and by,
as much as the wild birds,
their tenants,
or as the heather,
their produce.

Her descriptions,
then,
of natural scenery are what they should be,
and all they should be.

Where delineation of human character is concerned,
the case is different.

I am bound
to avow that she had scarcely more practical knowledge of the peasantry amongst whom she lived,
than a nun has of the country people who sometimes pass her convent gates.

My sister's disposition was not naturally gregarious;
circumstances favoured and fostered her tendency
to seclusion;
except
to go
to church or take a walk on the hills,
she rarely crossed the threshold of home.

Though her feeling
for the people round was benevolent,
intercourse
with them she never sought;
nor,
with very few exceptions,
ever experienced.

And yet she know them:

knew their ways,
their language,
their family histories;
she could hear of 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 real concerning them,
was too exclusively confined
to those tragic and terrible traits of which,
in listening
to the secret annals of every rude vicinage,
the memory is sometimes compelled
to receive the impress.

Her imagination,
which was a spirit more sombre than sunny,
more powerful than sportive,
found in such traits material whence it wrought creations like Heathcliff,
like Earnshaw,
like Catherine.

Having formed these beings,
she did not know what she had done.

If the auditor of her work,
when read in manuscript,
shuddered under the grinding influence of natures so relentless and implacable,
of spirits so lost and fallen;
if it was complained that the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes banished sleep by night,
and disturbed mental peace by day,
Ellis Bell would wonder what was meant,
and suspect the complainant of affectation.

Had she but lived,
her mind would of itself have grown like a strong tree,
loftier,
straighter,
wider-spreading,
and its matured fruits would have attained a mellower ripeness and sunnier bloom;
but on that mind time and experience alone could work:

to the influence of other intellects it was not amenable.

Having avowed that over much of
'Wuthering Heights'
there broods
'a horror of great darkness';
that,
in its storm-heated and electrical atmosphere,
we seem at times
to breathe lightning:

let me point
to those spots where clouded day-light and the eclipsed sun still attest their existence.

For a specimen of true benevolence and homely fidelity,
look at the character of Nelly Dean;
for an example of constancy and tenderness,
remark that of Edgar Linton.

(Some people will think these qualities do not shine so well incarnate in a man as they would do in a woman,
but Ellis Bell could never be brought
to comprehend this notion:

nothing moved her more than any insinuation that the faithfulness and clemency,
the long-suffering and loving-kindness which are esteemed virtues in the daughters of Eve,
become foibles in the sons of Adam.

She held that mercy and forgiveness are the divinest attributes of the Great Being who made both man and woman,
and that what clothes the Godhead in glory,
can disgrace no form of feeble humanity.)
There is a dry saturnine humour in the delineation of old Joseph,
and some glimpses of grace and gaiety animate the younger Catherine.

Nor is even the first heroine of the name destitute of a certain strange beauty in her fierceness,
or of honesty in the midst of perverted passion and passionate perversity.

Heathcliff,
indeed,
stands unredeemed;
never once swerving in his arrow-straight course
to perdition,
from the time when
'the little black-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 the farmhouse kitchen,
to the hour when Nelly Dean found the grim,
stalwart corpse laid on its back in the panel-enclosed bed,
with wide-gazing eyes that seemed
'to sneer at her attempt
to close them,
and parted lips and sharp white teeth that sneered too.'

Heathcliff betrays one solitary human feeling,
and that is NOT his love
for Catherine;
which is a sentiment fierce and inhuman:

a passion such as might boil and glow in the bad essence of some evil genius;
a fire that might form the tormented centre--the ever- suffering soul of a magnate of the infernal world:

and by its quenchless and ceaseless ravage effect the execution of the decree which dooms him
to carry Hell
with him wherever he wanders.

No;
the single link that connects Heathcliff
with humanity is his rudely-confessed regard
for Hareton Earnshaw--the young man whom he has ruined;
and then his half-implied esteem
for Nelly Dean.

These solitary traits omitted,
we should say he was child neither of Lascar nor gipsy,
but a man's shape animated by demon life--a Ghoul--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:

the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that,
at times,
strangely wills and works
for itself.

He may lay down rules and devise principles,
and
to rules and principles it will perhaps
for years lie in subjection;
and then,
haply without any warning of revolt,
there comes 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 the multitude 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,
a Tisiphone or a Psyche,
a Mermaid or a Madonna,
as Fate or Inspiration 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 passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question--that would not be uttered at your prayer,
nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice.

If the result be attractive,
the World will praise you,
who little deserve praise;
if it be repulsive,
the same World will blame 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 a solitary moor;
gazing thereon,
he saw how from the crag might be elicited a head,
savage,
swart,
sinister;
a form moulded
with at least one element of grandeur--power.

He wrought
with a rude chisel,
and from no model but the vision of his meditations.

With time and labour,
the crag took human shape;
and there it stands colossal,
dark,
and frowning,
half statue,
half rock:

in the former sense,
terrible and goblin-like;
in the latter,
almost beautiful,
for its colouring is of mellow grey,
and moorland moss clothes it;
and heath,
with its blooming bells and balmy fragrance,
grows faithfully close
to the giant's foot.

CURRER BELL.