Shirley by Charlotte Brontë was completed on 30th August 1849. It may be the most unheralded of all Charlotte’s novels, unfairly I would say, but it’s certainly in my opinion the most personal of novels. In Shirley, Charlotte included, masked by a change of name here and there, many of the people and places she had known: from her sisters to the Taylor family of Gomersal and her future husband Arthur Bell Nicholls. Along with the package Charlotte sent to her publishers at the end of August 1849 was also a deeply personal preface, and it’s this we will look at today.
The build up to the completion and publication of the novel had been an intensely traumatic one for Charlotte. Her debut published novel Jane Eyre had received great public acclamation and had brought her the promise of a wealthy future, but it had brought stinging rebukes from critics such as the Quarterly’s reviewer Elizabeth Rigby who called the novel “anti-Christian” and said of it: “It would be mere hackneyed courtesy to call it ‘fine writing.’ It bears no impress of being written at all, but is poured out rather in the heat and hurry of an instinct, which flows ungovernably on to its object, indifferent by what means it reaches it, and unconscious too. As regards the author’s chief object, however, it is a failure – that, namely, of making a plain, odd woman, destitute of all the conventional features of feminine attraction, interesting in our sight. We deny that he has succeeded in this.”
When Charlotte began work on Shirley her sisters Emily and Anne Brontë were in fine health, and Charlotte used them as inspiration for the novel’s heroines Shirley and Caroline. By the time the novel was completed, however, both sisters, and brother Branwell, had died. Charlotte concluded the writing of her novel with her life changed in every way, decimated in spirit and in health, and her preface to the novel was both an outpouring of grief and an outpouring of anger. It is a brilliant outpouring, and it is produced below under its title “A Word To The Quarterly”:
The public is respectfully informed that with this Preface it has no manner of concern, the same being a private and confidential letter to a friend, and – what is more – a “lady-friend.”
Currer Bell can have no hesitation as to the mode in which he ought to commence his epistle: he feels assured – his heart tells him that the individual who did him the honour of a small notice in the “Quarterly” – if not a woman, properly so called – is that yet more venerable character – an Old Woman. His ground then is clear and he falls to work upon it with much heart and comfort.
Dear Madam, I daresay I should have written you before but at the time your favour reached me I was engrossed with matters whereof I am dispensed from giving you the faintest outline of an account. It is not my intention to go through your article from beginning to end: I merely wish to have a little quiet chat with you on one or two paragraphs.
In the first place, you appear alarmed with an idea that “the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code, human and divine – abroad – and fostered Chartism and Rebellion – at home – is the same which has also written ‘Jane Eyre’.”
Let us not dwell on this subject: let us pass it lightly: if we trod with audacious emphasis, or if we confidingly sat down, both of us might fly abroad on the wings of sudden explosion. Any man’s nose may here wind a Gunpowder Plot; the very savour and odour of the thing is traitorous. Permit me but to whisper – as you and I glide off, arm-in-arm and on tip-toe – Don’t be too uneasy, dear Madam; take not on to any serious extent; be persuaded to keep as calm as may be. I am not at liberty to say more: we live in strange times – muffled in Mystery. Hush!
In the second place, you breathe a suspicion that Currer Bell, “for some sufficient reason” (Ah! Madam: Skilled by a touch to deepen Scandal’s tints, with all the kind mendacity of hints.) “for some sufficient reason” has long forfeited the society of your sex. In this passage – Madam – we discover an undoubted Mare’s nest: here is the cracked shell of the equine egg: there the colt making its escape á toutes jambes and alas! yonder – Truth scouring after it, catching it and finding the empty phantom vanish in her grasp. You should see – Ma’am, the figure Currer Bell can cut at a small party: you should watch him assisting at a tea-table; you should behold him holding skeins of silk or Berlin wool for the young ladies about whom he innocuously philanders, and who, in return, knit him comforters for winter-wear, or work him slippers for his invalid-member (he considers that rather an elegant expression – a nice substitute for – gouty foot; it was manufactured expressly for your refinement) you should see these things, for seeing is believing. Currer Bell forfeit the society of the better half of the human race? Heaven avert such a calamity – ! The idiot (inspired or otherwise) Samuel Richardson, could better have borne such a doom than he.
The idea by you propagated, if not by you conceived, that my book proceeded from the pen of Mr. Thackeray’s governess caught my fancy singularly: I felt a little puzzled with it, at first, as – I make no doubt – did Mr. Thackeray – but, on the whole, it struck me as being in my line – in the line of any novel-wright – something boldly imaginative, – cunningly inventive, the reverse of trite. You say, you see no great interest in the question; I do: a very comical interest. What other “romantic rumours” have been current in Mayfair? You set my curiosity on edge. I have but a very vague notion of the occupations and manner of life of the inhabitants of Mayfair, but I rather suspect them of resembling the old Athenians who spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Who invents the new things for their consumption? Who manufactures fictions to supply their cravings? I need not ask who vends them: you, Madam, are an active saleswoman; the pages of your “Quarterly” form a notable advertising medium.
Attentive to your stricture, I have made a point of ascertaining what that garment is which ladies, “roused in the night”, assume in preference to “frock” or gown, as being at once “more convenient and more becoming”. Candid – as I am sure you are, you will cheerfully allow that I have mastered it, and mastered it triumphantly; in proof whereof I point – not without exultation, to Mrs. Yorke in her Flannel Wrapper: chaste! simple! grand! severe! At this moment I recall another species of drapery whose dignity may be considered yet more recondite and impressive – the camisole or short night-jacket. On mature reflection however – it is my own unbiased opinion that the Wrapper – the Flannel Wrapper harmonises best with the genius of the British Nation to the folds of the Wrapper therefore I cling – and from that patriotic motives – the French – the Belgian women wear camisoles – and pretty figures they cut in them!
For the rest my accuracy is no novelty. Recollect, ma’am, it was only the happy little governess whom I represented as putting on her “frock” and shawl – and as she possessed but three “frocks” (that class of persons often use the word “frock” where a lady would say “dress”, if you observe, ma’am, as does also the domestic servant; – I like to put them on a level) in the world – a personage of your sagacity will have no difficulty in inferring that she was unlikely to boast any choice of garments more convenient and becoming; it may be questioned, indeed, whether it would not have been a piece of impertinent presumption in her to aspire to any such; at the same time two dowager ladies of quality, “roused in the night,” are exhibited as “bearing down on Mr. Rochester in vast white wrappers”. Here, ma’am, is both a fitness of things and a concatenation accordingly. I discuss these points at length under the satisfactory condition that I am writing to one who feels all their profound importance.
The other day I took the train down to Ingram Park to make personal inquiry of Miss Blanch Ingram’s maid about the material of her lady’s morning-dress. I am bound to confess that she shared your righteous indignation. “Crape!” she cried “her mistress never put on crape in a morning in her life, nor gauze neither!”. I petitioned to be informed – She told me “Barége” and proceeded to give a minute description of the pattern: you will have pleasure in hearing it repeated: A light blue ground, barred across with faint stripes of a deeper colour, figured with a pattern of small leaves mixed with zigzags, finished with a narrow silk stripe, straight down. “Very neat” I pronounced it.
You will perhaps say, Ma’am, that “barége” is a fabric of more recent invention than the days of Miss Ingram’s youth; in that case I can only answer, as the young ladies of a foreign establishment where I once taught English were wont briefly to answer when but too clearly convicted of fiction: “Tant pis!”
This preface was intended for Shirley
I had some thoughts on concluding my letter by a tender reproof of that rather coarse observation of yours relative to dessert-dishes and game – but I forbear – warning you only not to indulge too freely in the latter dish when very “high” – in that state it is not wholesome.
What a nice, pleasant gossip you and I have had together, Madam. How agreeable it is to twaddle at ones ease unmolested by a too fastidious public! Hoping to meet you one day again – and offering you such platonic homage as it becomes an old bachelor to pay. I am yours very devotedly, CURRER BELL”
It is clear that Charlotte is not in the mood to hold anything back, she has said what she has said and there is no more to be done – “tant pis” indeed. Charlotte’s publishers. However, found it very regrettable, and on this day in 1849 Charlotte wrote to both George Smith and W. S. Williams defending her preface and insisting that it should be published alongside Shirley.
To Williams. Charlotte wrote: “I cannot change my preface, I can shed no tears before the public, nor utter any groan in the public ear. The deep, real tragedy of our domestic experience is yet terribly fresh in my mind and memory. It is not a time to be talked about to the indifferent; it is not a topic for allusion to in print… Let Mr Smith fearlessly print the preface I have sent – let him depend upon me this once; even if I prove a broken reed, his fall cannot be dangerous: a preface is a short distance, it is not three volumes. I have alway felt certain that it is a deplorable error in an author to assume the tragic tone in addressing the public about his own wrongs or griefs. What does the public care about him as an individual? His wrongs are its sport; his griefs would be a bore. What we deeply feel is our own – we must keep it to ourselves. Ellis and Acton were, for me, Emily and Anne; my sisters – to me intimately near, tenderly dear – to the public they were nothing – beings speculated upon, misunderstood, misrepresented. If I live, the hour may come when the spirit will move me to speak of them, but it is not come yet.”
To George Smith, Charlotte wrote: “I do not know whether you share Mr Williams’s disapprobation of the Preface I sent, but if you do, ask him to shew you the note wherein I contumaciously persist in urging it upon you. I really cannot condescend to be serious with the Quarterly: it is too silly for solemnity.”
It seems that Williams at least had urged Charlotte to remove her attack on Rigby and the Quarterly and instead write about her dead sisters Emily and Anne. In this, as in all things, Charlotte would not be swayed. Many years later a publisher used an image of Elizabeth Rigby as the cover for Charlotte’s final novel Villette: revenge had been served cold. I hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.
