Had not my own two sisters died, I might have been tempted to make them
novelists: out of my bottom drawer I could have provided them with a
novel each and one for a "follow-on," and yet have left myself some
maturer works in hand. But _my_ sisters would have had to copy out the
manuscripts for the printers from my first drafts, and in every way
possible to merit and to establish association with the books as
authors. And how indignant we would have been--nay, alarmed, had there
been a "Newby arrangement," at some daring critic, like Lady Eastlake
and Sydney Dobell, imputing they were the work of one mind! Would we not
have appealed to clerical testimony? With a more practised hand
Charlotte Brontë in her days of fame corrected and edited _Wuthering
Heights_. Emily was dead. Well might Charlotte say the labour left her
"prostrate and entombed." What memories had it recalled!--what a
history! It is obvious to all who consider carefully the letter
Charlotte Brontë penned Wordsworth, to which I refer in the footnote on
page 17 of _The Key to the Brontë Works_, that she wrote her books
rapidly; and a review of the fact that the Brontë school project was
renounced in favour of literary projects suggests Currer Bell in 1845-46
revealed to her sisters the advantages of having a bottom drawer. Let
any reader use what I have termed the Key Index to the works of
Charlotte Brontë, and it will be perceived quite easily that _Wuthering
Heights_ is irrefutably at one with Currer Bell and all her other
books--that the works of Charlotte Brontë are all related to each other,
to Charlotte Brontë, and to the facts and people of her life as seen and
known by herself. The reader of a given Brontë work will glance down the
list in the Key Index under the heading of the particular book in hand
to find these very important and intensely interesting connections, now
first shown to exist:--
THE KEY INDEX
TO THE LIFE AND WORKS OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS.
Its relation to Charlotte Brontë's life, vii.-xi.[105], 16-19, 32-3,
37-53, 55-7, 69, 78-9, 83, 85-103, 106, 108-112, 114-8, 120-1,
126-9, 130-155, 156-8, 160-1, 168
In relation to Branwell Brontë, x., 18, 37-40, 52-3, 78-9, 93-5, 139
---- Tabby Aykroyd, x., 38, 40-1, 43-53, 77, 94-5, 147-8, 160, 168
---- M. Héger, viii., xi., 16, 17, 34, 56, 87, 89, 91-3, 96-103, 106,
111, 120-1, 128-9, 134-154, 157
---- Madame Héger, 106-7, 117
---- Taylor of Hunsworth, 83-9
---- Rev. Patrick Brontë, 49, 147;
the younger Cathy's father, 161
---- Maria Brontë, 37
---- Emily Brontë, viii., 17, 18, 40, 138, 146, 153, 156, 169
---- M. Sue, ix., 103-4, 106-112, 114, 121, 128, 132-142
---- Charlotte Brontë's _Poems_, 56, 97, 128, 132-7, 139, 140-5,
150-1, 157-8
---- Montagu, x., 17, 20-35, 55, 57-68, 71, 141-5
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