University of Virginia Library

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That the text of the Bronte letters published by Clement Shorter,[1] and after him by Wise and Symington in the Shakespeare Head Brontë of 1932[2] is imperfect and incomplete has been pointed out often enough.[3] But Brontë Hunters still rely, unhappily, upon these unreliable words. Perhaps, therefore, a demonstration may be acceptable of the serious persistence of Woozles in these scholarly woods.

One of the most quoted, most pillaged letters that Charlotte ever wrote is that of 4 September 1848, which she sent to Mary Taylor in far-away New Zealand, and which Mary cherished greatly. It is the only letter of Charlotte's which she kept, of all their rich correspondence, and she lent it to Mrs Gaskell for the Life in 1856.[4]

In this letter Charlotte recreated with obvious enjoyment for her one wholly congenial friend the drama of the visit which she and Anne had paid to London two months earlier to prove to their publishers their separate authorial identities. The passage of time since July, and Mary's distance in space, provided a perspective within which Charlotte could recreate and focus the whole extraordinary affair. She writes exceptionally well, her lively colloquial prose speeding along on the wings of commas and dashes. There are memorable vignettes, glancing personal comments, and telling points of detail. The historic confrontation of Brontë-Smith at 65 Cornhill in that "little back room . . . only large enough to hold 3 chairs and a desk" is brought to life in dialogue, followed by a breathless narrative of all that thereupon was said and done, before the exhausted pair returned to the haven of their moors.

Yet in neither substance nor tone is the version published by the Shorter-Wise-Symington complex the true text of what Charlotte wrote. Comparison with the letter itself, which has been in the Library of the University of Manchester for sixty years, reveals omissions, alterations and additions, the final result being so gross a travesty that it is difficult to credit.

Shorter is the villain of the piece, though Wise and Symington are equally culpable in following blindly in his footsteps. Shorter first printed the letter in 1900 in the Haworth edition of Mrs Gaskell's Life, in his footnote to the modified extract which she had inserted in her account of the visit (pp. 361-71). Shorter's introductory remarks suggest to the unsuspecting reader that, while Mrs Gaskell's is a "skilful paraphrase," his offering is the true original. Yet it is here, at this very point, that Shorter produces a mangled text of his own, adding to it, indeed, a detail which Mrs Gaskell had supplied from another source, and which Charlotte had not herself included.[5]

Shorter "normalized" all the punctuation, thus obliterating Charlotte's spontaneity, and in one instance at least, altering her meaning.[6] Far worse than this destruction of the communicative tone are the alterations and omissions, all unacknowledged. These latter range from single words — "gentlemanly," for instance, describing Smith — to passages of considerable length. The longest omission is of one and a half particularly lively pages, some 35 lines of Charlotte's writing, covering that interview in the "little back room" and Smith's

"loquacious" reaction. Next to this in length is the omission of 13½ lines describing the bewilderment of Smith's womenfolk on penetrating to the Chapter Coffee House that Sunday afternoon to take these two "insignificant spinsters" home to Bayswater to dinner. Occasionally Shorter inserts his own drab summary covering his omission, or otherwise smooths over a too obvious excision.

Besides these sins of omission, there are those of deliberate commission, when the facts are tampered with. "At last we were shown up to Mr Smith" is how Shorter renders that moment at 65 Cornhill. The facts are quite different. As they sat waiting by the busy shop-counter, "at last somebody came up," wrote Charlotte, "and said dubiously 'Did you wish to see me, Madam?'" Then she continued "We were both hurried from the shop into a little back room — ceiled with a great skylight — and only large enough to hold 3 chairs and a desk—."

One altered detail in particular epitomises the whole sorry business, the "snowstorm," for this has misled Brontë biographers ever since — such of them, that is (they are the majority), who have not consulted either Mrs Gaskell or Charlotte Brontë herself.

On the receipt at Haworth that 7 July 1848 of Smith and Elder's letter "all in alarm, suspicion and wrath" (another phrase Shorter omitted), she and Anne, Charlotte wrote, "packed up a small box, sent it down to Keighley — set out ourselves after tea — walked through a thunderstorm to the station, got to Leeds and whirled up by the Night train to London—"

Thunderstorm: the word is perfectly clear, and Mrs Gaskell used it. But in 1900 Shorter turned it into a snowstorm, and Brontë biographers ever since have, like the page in the carol, trodden in their master's steps "where the snow hath dinted." Snow or thunder, then becomes an Instant-Test for scholarly scrupulosity. Of some fifteen books in the last thirty years, only Fannie Ratchford passes this test, while Phyllis Bentley, Margaret Lane and Margaret Crompton, who rely upon Mrs Gaskell at the point of the storm, reveal by their wording about the Brontës being "shown up to Mr Smith" that they have accepted the Shorter-Wise-Symington versions of the letter itself.[7]

Romantic Brontë Hunters, of course, cannot resist that snow, and develop it with relish. It is so superbly appropriate as the weather for their quarry to be out in, even in midsummer. More soberly, Winifred Gérin, in her Charlotte Brontë (1967), ponders on the unseasonableness

of snow in July, but concludes that "at those altitudes" such a storm would not be surprising (p. 360). Perhaps not.

Where, and when, does this sort of thing stop? Woozle after woozle appears with every scholarly turn around the spinney. Pooh-Bear, at least, came to the point of acknowledging that he had been "Foolish and Deluded."

The moral is, that we desperately need a correct edition of the Brontë letters, and then, perhaps, all copies of Shorter, Wise and Symington throughout the land should be committed to a public bonfire, preferably during a THUNDER storm (one set to be retained, as a bibliographical memento).

An annotated literal transcription of Charlotte's letter is appended, by permission of the Library of the University of Manchester. Shorter's innumerable variations in punctuation, capitalization, spelling and other such matters have not been noted, except where the meaning is affected. Charlotte's impetuous dashes have, however, been retained.[8]