Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (607 page)

‘C. Brontë.’

CHAPTER XIV: WILLIAM SMITH WILLIAMS

In picturing the circle which surrounded Charlotte Brontë through her brief career, it is of the utmost importance that a word of recognition should be given, and that in no half-hearted manner, to Mr. William Smith Williams, who, in her later years, was Charlotte Brontë’s most intimate correspondent.  The letters to Mr. Williams are far and away the best that Charlotte wrote, at least of those which have been preserved.  They are full of literary enthusiasm and of intellectual interest.  They show Charlotte Brontë’s sound judgment and good heart more effectually than any other material which has been placed at the disposal of biographers.  They are an honour both to writer and receiver, and, in fact, reflect the mind of the one as much as the mind of the other.  Charlotte has emphasised the fact that she adapted herself to her correspondents, and in her letters to Mr. Williams we have her at her very best.  Mr. Williams occupied for many years the post of ‘reader’ in the firm of Smith & Elder.  That is a position scarcely less honourable and important than authorship itself.  In our own days Mr. George Meredith and Mr. John Morley have been ‘readers,’ and Mr. James Payn has held the same post in the firm which published the Brontë novels.

Mr. Williams, who was born in 1800, and died in 1875, had an interesting career even before he became associated with Smith & Elder.  In his younger days he was
 
apprenticed to Taylor & Hessey of Fleet Street; and he used to relate how his boyish ideals of Coleridge were shattered on beholding, for the first time, the bulky and ponderous figure of the great talker.  When Keats left England, for an early grave in Rome, it was Mr. Williams who saw him off.  Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and many other well-known men of letters were friendly with Mr. Williams from his earliest days, and he had for brother-in-law, Wells, the author of
Joseph and his Brethren
.  In his association with Smith & Elder he secured the friendship of Thackeray, of Mrs. Gaskell, and of many other writers.  He attracted the notice of Ruskin by a keen enthusiasm for the work of Turner.  It was he, in fact, who compiled that most interesting volume of
Selections from the writings of John Ruskin
, which has long gone out of print in its first form, but is still greatly sought for by the curious.  In connection with this volume I may print here a letter written by John Ruskin’s father to Mr. Williams, and I do so the more readily, as Mr. Williams’s name was withheld from the title-page of the
Selections
.

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

Denmark Hill, 25
th November
, 1861.

‘My dear Sir, — I am requested by Mrs. Ruskin to return her very sincere and grateful thanks for your kind consideration in presenting her with so beautifully bound a copy of the
Selections
from her son’s writings; and which she will have great pleasure in seeing by the side of the very magnificent volumes which the liberality of the gentlemen of your house has already enriched our library with.

‘Mrs. Ruskin joins me in offering congratulations on the great judgment you have displayed in your
Selections
, and, sending my own thanks and those of my son for the handsome gift to Mrs. Ruskin, — I am, my dear sir, yours very truly,

‘John James Ruskin.’

 
What Charlotte Brontë thought of Mr. Williams is sufficiently revealed by the multitude of letters which I have the good fortune to print, and that she had a reason to be grateful to him is obvious when we recollect that to him, and to him alone, was due her first recognition.  The parcel containing
The Professor
had wandered from publisher to publisher before it came into the hands of Mr. Williams.  It was he who recognised what all of us recognise now, that in spite of faults it is really a most considerable book.  I am inclined to think that it was refused by Smith & Elder rather on account of its insufficient length than for any other cause.  At any rate it was the length which was assigned to her as a reason for non-acceptance.  She was told that another book, which would make the accredited three volume novel, might receive more favourable consideration.

Charlotte Brontë took Mr. Williams’s advice.  She wrote
Jane Eyre
, and despatched it quickly to Smith & Elder’s house in Cornhill.  It was read by Mr. Williams, and read afterwards by Mr. George Smith; and it was published with the success that we know.  Charlotte awoke to find herself famous.  She became a regular correspondent with Mr. Williams, and not less than a hundred letters were sent to him, most of them treating of interesting literary matters.

One of Mr. Williams’s daughters, I may add, married Mr. Lowes Dickenson the portrait painter; his youngest child, a baby when Miss Brontë was alive, is famous in the musical world as Miss Anna Williams.  The family has an abundance of literary and artistic association, but the father we know as the friend and correspondent of Charlotte Brontë.  He still lives also in the memory of a large circle as a kindly and attractive — a singularly good and upright man.

Comment upon the following letters is in well-nigh every case superfluous.

 
TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘
February
25
th
1848.

‘My dear Sir, — I thank you for your note; its contents moved me much, though not to unmingled feelings of exultation.  Louis Philippe (unhappy and sordid old man!) and M. Guizot doubtless merit the sharp lesson they are now being taught, because they have both proved themselves men of dishonest hearts.  And every struggle any nation makes in the cause of Freedom and Truth has something noble in it — something that makes me wish it success; but I cannot believe that France — or at least Paris — will ever be the battle-ground of true Liberty, or the scene of its real triumphs.  I fear she does not know “how genuine glory is put on.”  Is that strength to be found in her which will not bend “but in magnanimous meekness”?  Have not her “unceasing changes” as yet always brought “perpetual emptiness”?  Has Paris the materials within her for thorough reform?  Mean, dishonest Guizot being discarded, will any better successor be found for him than brilliant, unprincipled Thiers?

‘But I damp your enthusiasm, which I would not wish to do, for true enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire wherever I see it.

‘The little note inclosed in yours is from a French lady, who asks my consent to the translation of
Jane Eyre
into the French language.  I thought it better to consult you before I replied.  I suppose she is competent to produce a decent translation, though one or two errors of orthography in her note rather afflict the eye; but I know that it is not unusual for what are considered well-educated French women to fail in the point of writing their mother tongue correctly.  But whether competent or not, I presume she has a right to translate the book with or without my consent.  She gives her address: Mdlle B — -
 
  W. Cumming, Esq., 23 North Bank, Regent’s Park.

‘Shall I reply to her note in the affirmative?

‘Waiting your opinion and answer, — I remain, dear sir, yours faithfully,

‘C. Bell.’

 
TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘
February
28
th
, 1848.

‘Dear Sir, — I have done as you advised me respecting Mdlle B — -, thanked her for her courtesy, and explained that I do not wish my consent to be regarded in the light of a formal sanction of the translation.

‘From the papers of Saturday I had learnt the abdication of Louis Philippe, the flight of the royal family, and the proclamation of a republic in France.  Rapid movements these, and some of them difficult of comprehension to a remote spectator.  What sort of spell has withered Louis Philippe’s strength?  Why, after having so long infatuatedly clung to Guizot, did he at once ignobly relinquish him?  Was it panic that made him so suddenly quit his throne and abandon his adherents without a struggle to retain one or aid the other?

‘Perhaps it might have been partly fear, but I daresay it was still more long-gathering weariness of the dangers and toils of royalty.  Few will pity the old monarch in his flight, yet I own he seems to me an object of pity.  His sister’s death shook him; years are heavy on him; the sword of Damocles has long been hanging over his head.  One cannot forget that monarchs and ministers are only human, and have only human energies to sustain them; and often they are sore beset.  Party spirit has no mercy; indignant Freedom seldom shows forbearance in her hour of revolt.  I wish you
could
see the aged gentleman trudging down Cornhill with his umbrella and carpet-bag, in good earnest; he would be safe in England: John Bull might laugh at him but he would do him no harm.

‘How strange it appears to see literary and scientific names figuring in the list of members of a Provisional Government!  How would it sound if Carlyle and Sir John Herschel and Tennyson and Mr. Thackeray and Douglas Jerrold were selected to manufacture a new constitution for England?  Whether do such men sway the public mind most effectually from their quiet studies or from a council-chamber?

‘And Thiers is set aside for a time; but won’t they be glad of
 
him by-and-by?  Can they set aside entirely anything so clever, so subtle, so accomplished, so aspiring — in a word, so thoroughly French, as he is?  Is he not the man to bide his time — to watch while unskilful theorists try their hand at administration and fail; and then to step out and show them how it should be done?

‘One would have thought political disturbance the natural element of a mind like Thiers’; but I know nothing of him except from his writings, and I always think he writes as if the shade of Bonaparte were walking to and fro in the room behind him and dictating every line he pens, sometimes approaching and bending over his shoulder,
pour voir de ses yeux
that such an action or event is represented or misrepresented (as the case may be) exactly as he wishes it.  Thiers seems to have contemplated Napoleon’s character till he has imbibed some of its nature.  Surely he must be an ambitious man, and, if so, surely he will at this juncture struggle to rise.

‘You should not apologise for what you call your “crudities.”  You know I like to hear your opinions and views on whatever subject it interests you to discuss.

‘From the little inscription outside your note I conclude you sent me the
Examiner
.  I thank you therefore for your kind intention and am sorry some unscrupulous person at the Post Office frustrated it, as no paper has reached my hands.  I suppose one ought to be thankful that letters are respected, as newspapers are by no means sure of safe conveyance. — I remain, dear sir, yours sincerely,

‘C. Bell.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘
May
12
th
, 1848.

‘My dear Sir, — I take a large sheet of paper, because I foresee that I am about to write another long letter, and for the same reason as before, viz., that yours interested me.

‘I have received the
Morning Chronicle
, and was both surprised and pleased to see the passage you speak of in one of its leading articles.  An allusion of that sort seems to say more than a regular notice.  I
do
trust I may have the power so to
 
write in future as not to disappoint those who have been kind enough to think and speak well of
Jane Eyre
; at any rate, I will take pains.  But still, whenever I hear my one book praised, the pleasure I feel is chastened by a mixture of doubt and fear; and, in truth, I hardly wish it to be otherwise: it is much too early for me to feel safe, or to take as my due the commendation bestowed.

‘Some remarks in your last letter on teaching commanded my attention.  I suppose you never were engaged in tuition yourself; but if you had been, you could not have more exactly hit on the great qualification — I had almost said the
one
great qualification — necessary to the task: the faculty, not merely of acquiring but of imparting knowledge — the power of influencing young minds — that natural fondness for, that innate sympathy with, children, which, you say, Mrs. Williams is so happy as to possess.  He or she who possesses this faculty, this sympathy — though perhaps not otherwise highly accomplished — need never fear failure in the career of instruction.  Children will be docile with them, will improve under them; parents will consequently repose in them confidence.  Their task will be comparatively light, their path comparatively smooth.  If the faculty be absent, the life of a teacher will be a struggle from beginning to end.  No matter how amiable the disposition, how strong the sense of duty, how active the desire to please; no matter how brilliant and varied the accomplishments; if the governess has not the power to win her young charge, the secret to instil gently and surely her own knowledge into the growing mind intrusted to her, she will have a wearing, wasting existence of it.  To
educate
a child, as I daresay Mrs. Williams has educated her children, probably with as much pleasure to herself as profit to them, will indeed be impossible to the teacher who lacks this qualification.  But, I conceive, should circumstances — as in the case of your daughters — compel a young girl notwithstanding to adopt a governess’s profession, she may contrive to
instruct
and even to instruct well.  That is, though she cannot form the child’s mind, mould its character, influence its disposition, and guide its conduct as she would wish, she may give
 
lessons — even good, clear, clever lessons in the various branches of knowledge.  She may earn and doubly earn her scanty salary as a daily governess.  As a school-teacher she may succeed; but as a resident governess she will never (except under peculiar and exceptional circumstances) be happy.  Her deficiency will harass her not so much in school-time as in play-hours; the moments that would be rest and recreation to the governess who understood and could adapt herself to children, will be almost torture to her who has not that power.  Many a time, when her charge turns unruly on her hands, when the responsibility which she would wish to discharge faithfully and perfectly, becomes unmanageable to her, she will wish herself a housemaid or kitchen girl, rather than a baited, trampled, desolate, distracted governess.