1*.)17] on The Brontes: A Hundred Years After 159 



and tells us that he admired her more than he did Charlotte, on the 

 ground apparently that he said of Emilj, " She ought to have been a 

 man, a great navigator" — evidence of affection which, in my opinion, 

 is about as cogent as the famous "Chops and Tomato Sauce," which 

 was, I believe, admitted as evidence in the leading case of " Bardwell 

 V. Pickwick." 



All these futile snrmises come from the foolish analysis of books 

 for their sources. The origin of a work of genius like " AVuthering 

 Heights " is not the places and the persons who may have been seen 

 and known by the author, but the inspiration is in the writer. It is 

 not the environment which makes the artist, it is the artist who 

 makes the environment. 



Charlotte Bronte said of her sister Emily that "she had no 

 model." The haggard players upon her stage are the children of her 

 weird imagination. But here, again, a very competent critic — Sydney 

 Dobel, who described " Wuthering Heights" as "the unformed writing 

 of a giant hand, the large utterance of a baby god " — did make a 

 mistake, and thought that the "giant hand" which wrote both "Jane 

 Eyre" and " AVuthering Heights" was that of Charlotte Bronte. 

 AVe know that was not the fact. It was a stronger hand than that 

 which wrote " Yillette " that wrote that eerie book of passionate 

 tragedy. It was the same hand or " baby god " who wrote " The 

 Old Stoic," "The Last Lines," and "Death!" — a stronger hand even 

 than that which wrote the " Dream of Pilate's Wife." 



AVe know something of Emily from Charlotte's photographic art, 

 for we find her in the brightest, the healthiest, but the most common- 

 place of her novels, " Shirley." There we have Shirley Keeldar 

 cauterising her own arm when she had been bitten by a dog she 

 believed to be mad. But that is one of the actual facts in Emily 

 Bronte's tragic life. She was a stoic, and bore and suffered the 

 dullness and monotony, which is worse than pain, with a stubborn 

 endurance of a "chainless soul." 



To the end she endured. She refused to see a doctor, and was 

 just willing to die. She was not the one to flinch when death came 

 to her. AVhen she could scarcely stand she got up out of bed and 

 tried to comb her hair — it was beautiful hair, and Emily had been 

 the beauty of the family — but so weak was she that the comb fell 

 from. her hand into the fire. "See, Martha," she said, "my comb 

 has fallen into the fire and I cannot get it." After that she was so 

 exhausted that she said, " I will see a doctor now." But it was too 

 late to call in a doctor. She leaned on the couch and passed away. 

 She was buried with the others in the Haworth churclj. 



Her fierce and faithful dog, "Keeper," when they came back 

 from the funeral, " lay down at Emily's door and howled pitifully for 

 many days." 



The dog had more sense than the British public, which did not 

 know the great loss it had sustained. The writer of "Wutherins: 



