7 (p. 275) “I can understand admiration of George Sand”: The French writer George Sand (1804—1876) is celebrated as much today for her bohemian lifestyle and cross-dressing as for her prolific literary output as novelist, dramatist, correspondent, memoirist, and political tract writer. “My profession is to be free,” she once declared.
8 (p. 278) “beyond anything due to a Bulwer or D’Israeli production”: Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) and Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) were politicians, novelists, and friends. Bulwer-Lytton’s sensationalistic bent made him one of the most popular writers of his day. Disraeli, who twice served as prime minister, wrote “condition of England” novels treating social issues. In suggesting that Lewes’s novel deserves more acclaim than a Bulwer or Disraeli production, Brontë is perhaps offering faint praise.
9 (p. 278) water-supply to each house: Patrick Brontë campaigned the Board of Health in London for more than a decade for a clean water supply and improved sanitary conditions for Haworth. Although an inspector finally arrived in 1849 and advocated, among other measures, immediately closing the graveyard, Haworth did not receive a piped water supply until 1858. (See Barker, The Brontës, p. 814.)
10 (p. 279) “That England may be spared the spasms... I earnestly pray”: Brontë fears that the working-class Chartist movement (1838-1848), which called for universal male suffrage and abolition of property qualifications for members of Parliament, would unleash a revolution in England like those that had been spreading on the Continent.
11 (p. 286) Chatterton: The poet Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), too avant-garde to be appreciated in his day, committed suicide at age seventeen. He later became an idol to the Romantics and Pre-Raphaelites.
CHAPTER III
1 (p. 296) “Quarterly Review” of December, 1848: Elizabeth Rigby’s anonymous review of Jane Eyre appeared this month (see endnote 3 to volume II, chapter II).
2 (p. 297) “lama sabachthoni,”—still, even then let him pray... than judge with the Pharisee: Gaskell’s defense of Brontë overdramatically culminates in Christ’s appeal on the cross: “Why hast thou forsaken me?” (See the King James Version of the Bible, Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46.) For the parable of the publican and the Pharisee, see Luke 18:10-14.
3 (p. 308) following account of the journey—and of the end: Ellen Nussey provided this eyewitness account of Anne Brontë’s death, albeit written in retrospect for Gaskell, who edited it.
CHAPTER IV
1 (p. 315) “three curates”: Two were based on Patrick Brontë’s former curates, James William Smith and Joseph Brett Grant, and the last on a curate of a neighboring parish. Brontë’s contempt for curates as a class is registered in a letter to Ellen Nussey: “At this blessed moment we have no less than three of them in Haworth-Parish—and God knows there is not one to mend another” (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, June [18?], 1845; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 1, p. 399).
2 (p. 320) Mr. Halclass="underline" William Margetson Heald, the vicar of Ellen Nussey’s parish, believed that either he or his father was the model for this character (William Heald to Nussey, January 8, 1850; in Wise and Symington, vol. 3, p. 63).
3 (p. 324) mortified her far more than actual blame: Interestingly, the criticisms Lewes offers are not of the kind Gaskell enumerates here. Far from lowering the standard, he claims to raise the bar by taking Brontë to task for stepping ”“out of her sex—without elevating herself above it.” [G. H. Lewes], Edinburgh Review 91, January 1850.
4 (p. 324) She often writes... the following... letters to Cornhill: The following letter is to James Taylor (November 6, 1849; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 2, pp. 280-281). Gaskell suppresses Taylor’s name as correspondent here and throughout presumably because she wants to deflect the suggestion that Brontë invited his marriage proposal. Brontë continued to correspond with Taylor after she rejected his suit and he left England to head Smith, Elder’s India office.
5 (p. 325) “I send you a couple of reviews:” The reviews are: [A. W Fonblanque], Examiner, November 3, 1849. and [W H. Howitt], Standard of Freedom, November 10, 1849 (see Allot, pp. 125-129, 133-135).
6 (p. 328) Miss Martineau: The versatile writer and thinker Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) addressed a wide range of subjects including women’s education, religion, and political economy. Her novel Deerbrook (1839) influenced Brontë.
7 (p. 329) in came a young-looking lady, almost child-like in stature: In her Autobiography (3 vols., London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1877), Martineau describes Brontë as “the smallest creature I had ever seen (except at a fair)” (vol. 2, p. 326).
CHAPTER V
1 (pp. 332-333) “friends have sent me books lately... ‘Nemesis of Faith’ ”: The books mentioned are Harriet Martineau’s Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848), Francis Newman’s The Soul, Its Sorrows and Its Aspirations (1849), and James Froude’s The Nemesis of Faith (1849).
2 (p. 333) “Mr.—.. Mr. R—... John—s wife”: Both Mr.—and Mr. R—are references to Arthur Bell Nicholls, Brontë’s future husband, on whom the one flattering portrait of a curate in Shirley is based. Brontë tells Nussey in another part of this letter that Nicholls “triumphed in his own character.” The wife of John Brown, the Haworth sexton, was Nicholls’s landlady.
3 (p. 333) “When they got the volumes at the Mechanics’ Institute”: Mechanics Institutes were cultural centers established for the use of the working classes. The one in Keighley hosted concerts, lectures, and classes, and offered a circulating library that the Brontës could use. Brontë refers in this letter to the Haworth Mechanics Institute, which was founded in 1849 with support from Brontë and her father.
4 (p. 337) “Nella Miseria—”: From Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, canto 5, lines 121-123, which reads in fulclass="underline" “There is no greater grief than remembering happy times in misery” (my translation).
5 (p. 338) Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth: James Kay Shuttleworth was a philanthropist and social reformer who was knighted for his services. Trained as a medical doctor, he worked to improve sanitary conditions among the poor and working classes in order to combat disease. He was also an early champion of national education. Sir James’s avocation was entertaining celebrated authors. It was at his estate near Windermere that Gaskell and Brontë met.
6 (p. 340) “Unprotected Female’ ”: The “Unprotected Female” was a series of sketches that appeared in the periodical Punch (founded in 1841) from 1849 to 1850. Punch, established by social reformer Henry May-hew (1812-1887) and journalists Joseph Stirling Coyne and Mark Lemon, blended political commentary and humorous cartoons.
7 (p. 341) “that, too, I read, and with unalloyed pleasure”: The most recent collection of essays by William Hazlitt would have been Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written There (1850). The other titles are Charles Cuthbert Southey’s edition of The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey (1849-1850); Julia Kavanagh, Woman in France During the Eighteenth Century (1850); Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men: Seven Lectures (1850); and A. J. Scott, Suggestions on Female Education (1849).