I first read Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Bronte when I was a teenager, newly enraptured by the Bronte sisters’ novels and the romantic bleakness of the Yorkshire moors. I remember the spell cast by the opening chapter as Gaskell takes us on her journey to visit Charlotte in Haworth. It is as though the reader is her companion on the Leeds and Bradford railway line to Keighley, then by carriage four miles to Haworth, past farms and workmen’s cottages and up the steep hill to the church, the parsonage, and the graveyard “terribly full of upright tombstones.” Gaskell, herself a novelist, paints an evocative picture of the landscape and atmosphere. We hear the horses’ hooves slipping on the paving stones of the steep street and breathe the “dim and lightless” air full of smoke from the clustered chimneys. I hadn’t read many biographies before and had expected it to start with Charlotte’s birth. I was so impressed with this way of leading the reader first into the world of the subject that my young self decided all biographies should be like this, that Elizabeth Gaskell had set the standard by which all others should be judged. It was one of the most memorable reading experiences of my life.
On publication in 1857, two years after Charlotte’s death, the Life was an immediate bestseller and has remained in print ever since, considered a classic of biography. What I did not know until recently, when I read a new book on the subject, is that on first publication Gaskell’s Life faced a storm of controversy causing major problems for the author and publisher.
As the title suggests, Graham Watson’s The Invention of Charlotte Bronte is about the creation of the enduring myth of the Brontes, in which Elizabeth Gaskell played the founding role. She could not be faulted for her research. Gaskell was a friend of Charlotte’s for five years and knew exactly who she would need to interview to give a complete account of her subject. She gained permission for the project, if reluctantly, from Charlotte’s husband Rev. Arthur Nicholls and father Rev. Patrick Bronte. She traveled the country visiting Charlotte’s publishers, friends, and the many acquaintances with whom she had corresponded. Though many of Charlotte’s letters were destroyed or lost, Gaskell still had a vast trove both to and from Charlotte to provide insight into her thoughts and relationships. She visited Cowan Bridge School, which inspired Lowood In Jane Eyre, and interviewed former pupils from Charlotte’s time there. She even went to Brussels to interview the Hegers, the couple who ran the school where Charlotte was both a pupil and teacher. It was Charlotte’s unrequited love for M. Heger that inspired the autobiographical novel Villette. In short, when Elizabeth Gaskell sat down to write she had prodigious amounts of material to work with. How she shaped this material would determine how Charlotte was remembered for generations to come.
Watson’s detailed research is as impressive as Gaskell’s. His book begins in 1848, the moment Charlotte became a public figure when she visited her publisher George Smith in London and revealed herself as Currer Bell, the author of Jane Eyre. Watson recounts Charlotte’s life from that moment, and then Elizabeth Gaskell’s work on the Life and the reaction to it. It reads as though he is a time traveler present in those Victorian rooms with so many famous names. In a wonderful set piece we hear Anthony Trollope condescendingly “mansplain” fiction writing to Charlotte Bronte! She didn’t like him. In another Charlotte is so shy of meeting new people at a friend’s house that she hides behind a curtain when a visitor is announced, only emerging when the visitor left. Thank heavens for those heavy brocade Victorian draperies!
When the Life was published in 1857 Elizabeth Gaskell treated herself to a well earned holiday in Italy with her two eldest daughters. She left her husband William, a Unitarian minister, to deal with the flood of mail reacting to the Life. When she returned home in May she found herself under attack from practically everyone associated with Charlotte Bronte who was depicted in her book. The trouble was, this was a book filled with people still living. They disputed facts and objected to how they were characterized. Letters flew through the Royal Mail to Gaskell, her publisher, and to newspapers all over the country. Details in the book were litigated in public with dueling letters to the editor filling columns of newsprint, each one prompting more debate, accusations, and indignant denials.
Among the letter writers was Patrick Bronte who disputed some of the stories about his temper and eccentricity, though they came from Haworth residents who had worked for the family. No he did not deny his children meat, causing them to have weak constitutions; no he never ripped up his wife’s dresses after her death; no he did not cause Charlotte unhappiness by withholding his permission to marry for years. The family of Rev. William Carus-Wilson, headmaster of Cowan Bridge School, threatened legal action, denying the school’s deplorable conditions and inadequate food, though Gaskell confirmed Charlotte’s account in Jane Eyre with other former pupils. One of the angriest letter writers was Harriet Martineau, a writer and social reformer who had a brief friendship with Charlotte. They fell out over Harriet’s atheism and her scathing review of Villette. She accused Gaskell of character assassination and claimed the friendship had never ended.
There seemed no end to the angry chorus. Eventually Gaskell’s publisher, the same George Smith who had published the Bronte novels, was so afraid of libel suits that he persuaded Gaskell to revise the book for the third edition. Watson recounts Gaskell’s tireless work poring over the manuscript, carefully collating all the objections, and revising the text accordingly. The third edition was well received and seemed to mollify the critics. Elizabeth Gaskell, though, was exhausted by the experience and seemed to regret her foray into biography writing. She turned back to fiction, writing more novels and many short stories for magazines. Though her name is not as well known as Charlotte Bronte’s, Gaskell is still read today. Her best known novels Cranford and North and South were made into popular TV series.
When I finished reading The Invention of Charlotte Bronte my first thought was: which edition had I read all those years ago? I found my original Penguin paperback on my bookshelf and checked the introduction. I was pleased to find that it is the restored first edition, with appendices listing all the redactions that were made in the third edition.
The subtitle of Graham Watson’s book, A New Life, is well earned. The Charlotte who emerges in these pages is a sharper person, as though Elizabeth Gaskell smoothed out her portrait, creating a mythic figure. Charlotte could be difficult and test her friends’ patience. George Smith said she was a terrible house guest, impossible to please. She was intense and imagined her relationships to be more significant than they were. Though there was no hint of a romance with Smith, Charlotte was so jealous and upset when he married that she promptly boxed up all the books he had gifted her and sent them back! Her persistence in writing emotional letters to M. Heger earned Mme. Heger’s contempt and hatred.
Gaskell airbrushed Haworth too. It was not so isolated as she suggests. Many Haworth residents were astonished by Gaskell’s account, for it was actually a bustling industrial town of over 2,000 people. And the graveyard had few upright stones, most were set flat in the ground. The romantic picture of the moors looming over the parsonage included in the Life was actually drawn by one of Gaskell’s daughters from imagination.
The Invention of Charlotte Bronte is an enthralling read and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in a fresh take on the Bronte myth.
Dispatches From the Former New World 