Birthday special: the legacy of emily bronte, the recluse writer

Kaya Scodelario played Catherine Earnshaw in Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (2011) | A BRONTE FAN, AMIT RANJAN REMEMBERS THIS RECLUSE WRITER WHOSE ONLY NOVEL WOULD ALWAYS BE A CLASSIC

FAVOURITE Emily Bronte turns 199, not out, on 30th July. There are myriad books and essays about this one book wonder, who wrote __Wuthering Heights__ under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. There

were two novels in this volume – the second one was her younger sister Anne’s __Agnes Gray, __also under a pseudonym, Acton Bell. The book was published in 1847, and Emily succumbed to

consumption (tuberculosis), the scourge of 19thcentury, in the following year, 1848. Since then, her popularity has steadily grown owing to her rather Gothic novel with its plot involving

passion and violence and keeping an amoral tone in an age of Victorian morality. Charlotte Bronte, elder to both of the above mentioned, also published her renowned novel __Jane Eyre __in

1847. So, this year is also the 170th anniversary of the creation of the legacy of the Bronte sisters. There are a few biographies about Emily Bronte, but there is a lot that eludes about

her, for there is little material to work with – she wrote a few letters, there are not many papers of hers that survive; in fact it is said that Charlotte burnt some of Emily’s memoirs

after her death. John Hewish says of Emily’s life that “this author’s life and personality are monolithic and tend to be biographer-proof.” Her life is largely gleaned from the fiction

written by her and Charlotte, and Charlotte’s famous biography by Elizabeth Gaskell. It is a case of hunting for history through fiction, and tells us how fact and fiction are always

intertwined in creation of histories; how history itself is only the known narrative. Since, it is Emily’s birthday, let us talk about two important curiosities of her life – her “Birthday

Papers” and her dog Keeper. These two constantly recur in any attempt at recounting Emily’s life – it is not just her papers that tell about her, but also it seems Keeper is an important

keeper of her legacy. Keeper was a part-mongrel, part-mastiff big dog who would accompany her on long walks across the moor that overlooked her house at Hawthorn. The image of a young girl

wandering across the moor with her big mastiff fed into the Romantic imagination of the readers and the raconteurs, and he went on to acquire a legendary status. Maureen Adams tells in her

book __Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte__ that years after her death, people recounted how

this tall girl would appear out of the fog with her dog. She says, “No warning of their approach could be heard except for the dog’s odd breathing, a wheezing whistle, the result of an

injury from one of his fierce brawls with local dogs. Emily would nod a greeting and pause to hear the latest tales of quarrels, thievery, or latest ghost sightings… A strange pair they

were, uncanny and frightening, like the old stories of the goddesses and their dogs. Yet there was a gentleness between them.” Emily Bronte | Lyn Pykett, in her eponymous book __Emily Bronte

__(1989) mentions a John Greenwood who wrote a diary about life in Hawthorn. Greenwood tells that once Keeper was attacked by another dog; and on being informed, Emily rushed with a bottle

of pepper to the battle scene. He tells “She never spoke a word, nor appeared at a loss what to do, but rushed at once into the kitchen, took the pepper box, and away into the lane, where

she found the two savage brutes each holding the other by the throat…while several other animals who thought themselves men, where standing looking like cowards…watching this fragile

creature spring upon the beasts – seizing Keeper round the neck with one arm, while with the other she dredges well their noses with pepper, and separating them by force of great will…” It

is said that Keeper went into mourning after her death and for the three years of his life after her, he was like his own ghost. Animals were so important to Emily, or so it is believed,

that biographers often tapped into the portraits of the two dogs – Ginger and Keeper, and the cat Flossie. Today, if you go to Hawthorn, a tourist guide would tell you that the cat lurking

around is descended from Flossie and the dog barking on the street is a kin of Keeper. Now, let us turn to the Birthday Papers. It was a pact between Emily and Anne that they would write

diaries commencing at Emily’s birthday, every four years. The previous diary would be read after four years too. So these diaries were written in 1834, 1837, 1841, and 1845. The first two

are co-authored, the latter two are by Emily, and she didn’t live to see 1849 for the next edition. The 1841 papers talk about the desire to set up a school of their own, and by 1845 in the

next set of papers the idea is abandoned and instead Emily has invested in shares of a railway company for financial security of the sisters who lost their mother at a very tender age.

Another very interesting feature of the Birthday Papers is the world of Gondal. It was an island conjured in the sisters’ imagination and they built up the characters of this fantasy

throughout their lives. The Gondal characters appear in each of the Birthday Papers, and Emily also wrote poems about them. In the 1845, Anne reports in her papers that Emily is writing the

history of Emperor Julius. Had Emily completed the work, who knows – that work may have been more in vogue than Shakespeare’s play  __Julius Caesar.__ __ __On the Hawthorn moor, there was a

solitary reaper And to keep her company was a Keeper, A keeper of her nightmares and dreams. Ego and alter-ego Her silence, and Keeper’s screams.