6 (p. 403) “I read Miss Kavanagh’s ‘Women of Christianity’ ”: The full title of Julia Kavanagh’s book is Women of Christianity: Exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity (1852).
7 (p. 416) “I called her ’Lucy Snowe’ ... ‘lucus a non lucendo’ principle”: The principle is an etymological contradiction. The word lucus means “dark grove” in Latin, but it is derived from the verb lucere, “to shine,” based on the absence of light. Similarly, Lucy Snowe’s “external coldness” belies her inner fire.
8 (p. 418) some word or act of hers had given offence: Gaskell minimizes Brontë’s fears here to gloss over her true cause for concern—the fact that she had represented George Smith and his mother in Villette as Mrs. Bretton and her son Dr. John. Smith later owned that the portraits were based on his mother and him.
CHAPTER XII
1 (p. 421) put aside all consideration of how she should reply, excepting as he wished!: Brontë had her own reservations about marrying Nicholls, independent of her father’s objections. See the Introduction.
2 (p. 424) Miss Martineau... wounded her to the quick... merely artistic fault: In her review of Villette in the Daily News, February 3, 1853 (Allot, pp. 171-174), Martineau faulted Brontë for making love too central to the lives of her female characters, insisting that there “are substantial, heartfelt interests for women of all ages, and under ordinary circumstances, quite apart from love.”
3 (p. 426) “I read attentively all you say about Miss Martineau... hundreds have forsaken her”: Martineau objected to this characterization, and to Gaskell’s account of her rift with Brontë. In the third edition Gaskell included a footnote and additional material in the body of the text to represent Martineau’s side of the story, which was, in the main, a reiteration of the fact that Brontë urged her to be frank with her criticism.
4 (p. 438) Mrs. Marsh’s story ... Miss Bremer’s story: Anne Marsh-Caldwell wrote “The Deformed,” published in Two Old Men’s Tales (1834); Fredrika Bremer wrote The Neighbours (translated in 1842).
5 (p. 440) Mr. Brontë became reconciled to the idea of his daughter’s marriage: Gaskell may have directly contributed to this change of heart by asking Richard Monckton Milnes to use his influence to secure a pension that would increase Nicholls’s income. Gaskell urged secrecy: “If my well-meant treachery becomes known I will lose her friendship, which I prize most highly” (The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, letter 168).
6 (p. 443) “my father’s sympathies... are all with Justice and Europe, against Tyranny and Russia”: Brontë refers here to the diplomatic prelude to the Crimean War.
7 (p. 451) natural cause for her miserable indisposition: Brontë’s letters to Nussey indicate that she was pregnant. It is unclear whether her death was caused by a complication of pregnancy or by an infectious disease.
THE LEGACY OF THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Throughout The Life of Charlotte Brontë Elizabeth Gaskell claims Brontë as her “dear friend.” Their status as leading Victorian novelists initially brought the two women to each other’s notice, and as they embarked upon their friendship, professional appreciation quickly translated into a deep personal connection. In the mid-nineteenth century, Gaskell was the more popular novelist, but her renown gradually faded after her death, while Brontë’s fame grew after she died. Brontë’s continued popularity owes much to Gaskell’s Life, and Gaskell’s enduring reputation has been earned as much from her only attempt at biography as from her novels. This mutual benefit to two authors—subject and biographer—echoes that which resulted following James Boswell’s publication in 1791 of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.; widely considered the greatest biography in the English language, it enhanced the reputation of both men.
While some readers now consider Gaskell’s fiction overly sentimental, others continue to enjoy her novels of manners Cranford (1853) and Wives and Daughters (1866), and to read and study her “condition of England” novels Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1854), which prove particularly enduring as they shed light on the social history of their time. As for The Life of Charlotte Brontë, it is the depth of the work and the sympathy the writer obviously felt for her subject that make it compelling to readers today. Much of the book’s immediate and continued success derives from Gaskell’s talent for, as Eneas Sweetland Dallas put it in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, “personal discourse and familiar narrative,” novelistic touches that were enthusiastically received by a reading public thirsty for confidences and scandal.
Most dramatically, Gaskell describes the plight of Charlotte’s feckless brother, Branwell, who, she alleges, engaged in a sexual liaison with Lydia Robinson, the wife of the man who had hired him as a tutor. The present text of The Life of Charlotte Brontë is that of the first 479 edition, which includes Gaskell’s original and full “account of Branwell Brontë’s wretched fate,” as William Caldwell Roscoe described it in the National Review, adding that it was “recorded with unnecessary detail.” Here is what Gaskell wrote:[Branwell’s] case presents the reverse of the usual features; the man became the victim; the man’s life was blighted, and crushed out of him by suffering, and guilt entailed by guilt; the man’s family were stung by keenest shame. The woman—to think of her father’s pious name—the blood of honourable families mixed in her veins—her early home, underneath whose rooftree sat those whose names are held saintlike for their good deeds,—she goes flaunting about to this day in respectable society; a showy woman for her age; kept afloat by her reputed wealth. I see her name in county papers, as one of those who patronize the Christmas balls; and I hear of her in London drawing-rooms (p. 223 in this edition).
As Gaskell prepares to quote from some of Charlotte’s letters to bolster her case against Robinson, she continues, “Now let us read, not merely of the suffering of her guilty accomplice but of the misery she caused to innocent victims, whose premature deaths may, in part, be laid at her door.”
Gaskell’s version of Branwell’s affair with Robinson provoked a strong reaction in the press. James Fitzjames Stephen, writing in the Edinburgh Review, railed against Gaskelclass="underline" “No doubt, from mistaken information and mistaken motives... she appears to have entirely misconceived the duties and the rights of her position as an authoress.” Stephen continued, “A man’s honour, a woman’s virtue, are not to be blown to the winds merely because it suits the humour of a romancer to rake up some imaginary or forgotten transgression—to dress it in colours of fiction, heightened by the mischievous attraction of personal slander.”
Not only was Lydia Robinson still living when the Life was published, she was a prominent member of London society (she had remarried and become Lady Scott). Upon publication of the book, she immediately filed a libel suit against Gaskell; as a result, all unsold copies of The Life of Charlotte Brontë were pulled from the shelves. In a letter from Mrs. Gaskell’s solicitor that appeared in the London Times, the author endeavored “to retract every statement contained in that work which imputes to a widowed lady, referred to, but not named therein, any breach of her conjugal, of her maternal, and of her social duties, &c.” All subsequent editions of the Life were issued as “revised,” to indicate that all passages deemed incriminating to Lady Scott had been removed.