The Authorshipi - of 'Wuthering Heights: -Irene Coopea
A Brontë Problem
(Hogarth Press. 3s. 611.) Ax awful Nemesis is always in ambush for those students of the Wont 1,s who pronounce too pontifically about their works and days. Not tong ago some shrill anti-Branwellites, who were a shade too certain that he had never written a verse that was not plirest doggereL.and that Emily had never written one that was not of purest ray serene, were faced with a disconcert- ing proof that several of Emily's justly admired poems were by her brother. Again, with what indignation had the devotees of Charlotte repudiated the impious theory, founded on internal evidence in rilleite, that she had been in love with M. Constantin Heger Charlotte's high moral code, they said, could .never have suffered her to love another woman's husband : she must have strangled the impulse at birth. Dire was the Nemesis when the publication of her letters to her tutor :at. Brussels proved that the impossible was true.
Miss. Cooper Willis need fear-no such disaster, for her interesting essay only sets out to prove that Branwell could not have been the author of Warthering heights : by now this is surety a Nemesis-proof proposition. There arc two sections : the first consists of a very careful examination of the style and eonstructh'n of Emily's masterpiece, which she justly ranks -among the very greatest of English novels. Like all true Einily-ites she finds purpose and genius in every line of it. The sentence " One step broUghtUs into the family sitting room;:. she tells us, " marches exactly with the action it describes." It might therefore be assumed that the extreme awkwardness of the construction of Mattering heights would not exist for her. It opens with the first-hand narrative of Mr. Liwkwood, consisting of the short description of his two first visits to Heatheliff. After that Nellie Dean becomes narrator, she tells Lockwood theAristory of the family for eightkpages. Then he falls ill, and she takes up the narrative agaitr.i...in all this occupies twenty-seven chapters. Lockwood does not come in, except as a silent listener, till quite near the end of the book, and now his whole style is that of a totally different writer, though Miss Willis maintains that the tech- nique:is the same. But in the opening chapters he is pompous and journalistic, reeking of scholastic pretentiousness. " I had no desire to aggravate his impatience previous to inspecting the penetralimn." . . . "A mingled guffaw from Heatheliff and ft:Ireton put the cope-stone on may rage and humiliation."
. . . ordered the miscreants to let me out with several incoherent threats of retaliation that in their indefinite depth of vie envy smacked of King Lear." . . . But listen to him when reappears aanarrator at the end : " I lingered round thentianaler that benign sky, watched the moths fluttering among- the heath and hare-bells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone couki ever instgine unquiet slumbers for the-sleepers in- that quiet earth."
loW can we account for this awkward construction and this unrecognisable Lockwood i Emily and Branwell in that nightmare-life at the Parsonage, when he had been dismissed from his tutorship, and daily, when in funds, got tipsy at the Black Bull, were both whiting, and she alone had tenderness and compassion for him. is it not possible that I hey planned. a book together,. that. he began it, and that she took it over, retaining his beginning ? That would account for the awkwardness of construction and the trans- formed Lockwood. Those early chapters markedly re,runb!e in style -certain letters of Branwell's (notably " Old Knave of 'frumps ") : there are striking phrases in them which reappear ll'aihering Heights, and there is much other evidence it is hi1l/11,391NC to disregard, unless we suppose that Branwell and four of his friends gratuitously conspired to assert that he had something to do with the earlier part of the hook and with the planning of it. There is, of course, no doubt whatever that the fire, the imagination, the genius, that make Ind/tering Height's rank high in immortal literature, were entirr.127 Emily's, but, if we weigh -this evidence, there is also no doubt that Branwell WAS somehow cooeemed: ire the book, though his part may chiefly somehow been to hive landed Emily in difficulties.
Miss Willis in her second section gives us copious extracts, by way of contrast and for proof that Branwell had no hand in nattering heights, from a story by him, the title of which is And the weary are at rest, and its hero Alexander Percy.
Let it be conceded at once that.theffzitinaof trocjits in–erwirearAr — is a revelation of what vile prose Branwell was capable.-- But in itself that proves nothing, for indeed Etranwell's poalfhle share in the actual wording of the early dehapters of Em*'s story is very sorry- stuff. This tale of his'(though tmreadatile) has certain Angrian associations„ for it should be noti that before 1834, when he was only 17, he had used the title in a contribution to his and Charliitte's Saga, and" lad written a story in two volumes, called • The -Life of .Pit.ld Marshal the HonourableAlexander Percy.. -If, then, this is a mature work of his, it may conceivably be an adaptat of something he had written when quite a boy.. . . a boon it would be to all Bronteites of whatever sect if Cooper Willis, with her keen critical perception, would p curb on her genial savagery against Branwell, and impartiy consider the evidence for..his collaboration with his sister...1, E. F. 13e.s.Tsol
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