Tales of the Islanders E-Book

Charlotte Bronte

• Herausgeber: Hesperus Press Ltd.
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 130

Beschreibung

When Charlotte's brother Branwell was given a set of 12 toy soldiers, an entire new imaginary world opened before them. The Twelves, or Young Men, became a constant source of inspiration for the Brontë children, spawning tales of swashbuckling adventure, darkest intrigue, doomed romance, and malevolent spirits. The four volumes of tales collected here make delightful reading, while offering a unique insight into Brontë family life and Charlotte's development as a writer.

Leseprobe

Hesperus Classics

Published by Hesperus Press Limited

19 Bulstrode Street, London w1u 2JN

www.hesperuspress.com

First published 1925

First published by Hesperus Press Limited, 2011

Introduction ©Jessica Cox, 2011

Designed and typeset by Fraser Muggeridge studio

Printed in Jordan byJordan National Press

ISBN: 978-1-84391-201-9

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express priorconsent of the publisher.

CONTENTS

Introduction by Jessica Cox

Tales of the Islanders

Notes

Note on the text

Biographical note

INTRODUCTION

Charlotte Brontë’s literary apprenticeship began many years before she published her first novel in 1847. During her childhood spent in Haworth parsonage in Yorkshire, Charlotte, along with her brother and sisters, Branwell, Emily and Anne, devoted much of her time to the world of her imagination, recording her creations in tiny, at times almost illegible handwriting. Some of these manuscripts were made into minuscule, handmade books – an effort that bears testament to the importance of these fictions to the Brontë children. The sheer volume of material which Charlotte produced in her teenage years alone is astounding, and the writing is suggestive of an irrepressible creative impulse. The earliest surviving writings by the Brontë children detail the origins of their stories, which developed from the gift of a set of toy soldiers presented to Branwell Brontë by his father Patrick. The four Brontë children each selected a soldier and created an identity for him, Charlotte choosing the Duke of Wellington – one of her childhood heroes and a figure who features repeatedly in her early writing. From this emerged the ‘Young Men’ plays, which in turn gave way to the ‘Tales of the Islanders’, also featuring Wellington, and later to the ‘Glasstown’ and ‘Angria’ stories. Out of the Brontë children’s imaginations sprang sagas complete with vast kingdoms and characters exquisitely detailed. Brontë’s juvenilia thus provides a fascinating insight into the developing mind of the writer who would eventually produce Jane Eyre – one of the most prevailingly popular novels in the English language.

Some of Charlotte Brontë’s earliest surviving writing, ‘Tales of the Islanders’ was composed between July 1829 and July 1830, when incredibly, she was just thirteen years old. When Elizabeth Gaskell, in the process of writing her biography of Charlotte Brontë, was given a packet containing some of Brontë’s juvenile literary productions, she dismissed it as ‘wild weird writing’, and suggested that ‘when she gives way to her powers of creation, her fancy and her language alike run riot, sometimes to the borders of apparent delirium.’ However, although the writing is, as we might expect, in many respects immature, it nevertheless contains the germs of Charlotte Brontë’s later literary productions, as well as providing an intriguing glimpse into the minds and experiences of the Brontë children.

Brontë’s juvenilia is – as Elizabeth Gaskell implies – notable for its lack of restraint: years later, when she was trying to forge a career as a professional novelist, Charlotte was, inevitably, governed by her sense of the requirements of the literary marketplace, as well as by her desire to succeed not merely in terms of sales, but in terms of critical acclaim. No such influences govern her juvenile productions, however, which were intended for the eyes of the writer and her siblings only, and they are a heady mix of Gothic, sensational, grotesque and exotic elements, combined with social commentaries and insights into life at Haworth parsonage. ‘Tales of the Islanders’ serves as a representative example: historical events and personages are mingled with particulars of the Brontë children’s daily lives, detailed descriptions of exotic lands, and accounts of fantastic adventures which include fairies, flying giants and sea monsters.

The ‘Tales’ begin with an account of their origins: Brontë describes how each of the four children, in December 1827, selected an island and a ‘chief man’ – Charlotte’s again being the Duke of Wellington. The children themselves feature in the ‘Tales’ both by name and as the ‘little King and Queens’, manipulating events as both participants in and creators of this imaginary world. The volumes comprise a series of short, largely unconnected tales, which detail the adventures of the various characters. The ‘Tales’ as a whole are framed within Brontë’s account of their creation, concluding with a further reference to the creators:

That is Emily’s, Branwell’s, Anne’s and my land And now I bid a kind goodbye To those who o’er my book cast an indulgent eye.

The individual stories also at times employ a frame narrative – a technique later employed by Emily and Anne Brontë in Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall respectively.

Many of the characters in the ‘Tales’ are based on public figures of the period – in particular, politicians of the day – a reflection of the young Brontë’s interest in political and current affairs. Indeed, from an early age the Brontë children were encouraged by their father to take an interest in the world outside of the parsonage (a fact reflected in the social commentaries provided by their later novels): they had access to various newspapers, which the family would read and discuss together. The young Brontë children’s somewhat surprising intense interest in politics, reflected in the choice of characters in ‘Tales’ as well as elsewhere in their juvenilia, is testament to the influence of this material. Charlotte’s enthusiasm for political issues is apparent in her digressive discussion of the ‘great Catholic question’ at the beginning of Volume Two -an issue in which the Brontë family took a great interest: ‘I remember the day when the Intelligence Extraordinary came with Mr Peel’s speech in it containing the terms on which the Catholics were to be let in; with what eagerness papa tore off the cover and how we all gathered round him and with what breathless anxiety we listened.’ The issue of Catholicism is explored further in the ‘Tales’, offering a significant insight into the teenage Brontë’s anti-Catholic prejudices, which she was to retain, to some degree, throughout her life. Chapter Five of Volume Two describes the conversion of an Irish man and his family from Catholicism to the Church of England, in spite of the evil machinations of a Catholic priest.

Though the ‘Tales’ clearly demonstrate the young Brontë’s familiarity with and interest in current affairs, they also speak of an overwhelming concern with the fantastical. In this respect, they can be seen to engage with the Romantic tradition, by this time firmly established, and in particular with the fantastical creations of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose work, like the ‘Tales’, frequently combines elements of the Gothic, fantasy and the grotesque. Such features are particularly prominent in the final story of the ‘Tales’, in which an old man – a Muslim named Mirza Abduliemah – is transported to strange and exotic lands, encounters various weird and mystical creatures, including ‘a vast army of giants’, and is subject to an array of horrifying ordeals, culminating in his being burned to death in a sacrificial ceremony. The graphic description of his torture is suggestive of Brontë’s burgeoning interest in the Gothic and the grotesque: ‘he felt all the sinews crack the calcined bones started through his blackened cindery flesh.’ The tale’s blurring of the boundary between reality and dream again resonates with Romantic writings, such as Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’: ‘Was it a vision, or a waking dream? […] [D]o I wake or sleep?’ Undoubtedly, the young Brontës’ reading included the works of some of the most prominent figures of the Romantic movement – Wordsworth, Byron and Southey – and these writers exerted a powerful influence on Charlotte Brontë’s writing throughout her life. Indeed, as early Victorian novelists, the works of the Brontë sisters can be seen to straddle the boundary between Romanticism and Victorianism, and their early writing is clearly indebted to the literary productions of the Romantic poets.

At face value, the ‘Tales’ may appear to have little in common with Charlotte Brontë’s later novels, but, although the writing is the product of an immature, still-developing mind, glimpses of the literary mind which would later emerge can nevertheless be seen. The authorial presence and the autobiographical elements of the narrative resonate with her later fiction, much of which was rooted in her own experiences. At times, the narrator of the ‘Tales’ intrudes on the narrative and addresses the reader directly, again anticipating a key aspect of her later work (as in the famous line which opens the final chapter of Jane Eyre – ‘Reader, I married him’). The ‘Tales’ are also notable for their detailed descriptions of landscape and setting, and the weather in particular is frequently used symbolically, as in her later fiction. The reference to ‘an oak […] scathed by lightning’ in the first volume of the ‘Tales’ seems to anticipate directly the destruction of the horse-chestnut tree in Jane Eyre. The blending of details of the Brontës’ daily lives with elements of the Gothic, sensational and fantastical can also be seen to foreshadow Brontë’s later fiction – in which realism is often combined uneasily with the dramatic and sensational. The ‘Tales’ include numerous references to strange portents and omens, and in this respect recall Jane Eyre’s dreams and uncanny foreshadowing of the future, as well as the strange ghostly figure of the nun in Villette.

There are obvious and significant differences between Brontë’s juvenilia and her later published work (not only in terms of literary merit, but also in terms of her early work’s predominant focus on male experience, in contrast to her later concern with female experience). However, as a sample of Charlotte Brontë’s early literary productions, ‘Tales of the Islanders’ forms part of a body of work that provides a valuable insight into her early life and influences, and her development as a writer.

- Jessica Cox, 2011

Tales of the Islanders

Volume 1

The Play of the Islanders was formed, in December 1827, in the following manner. One night, about the time when the cold sleet and dreary fogs of November are succeeded by the snow storms and high piercing nightwinds of confirmed winter, we were all sitting round the warm blazing kitchen fire, having just concluded a quarrel with Taby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle from which she came off victorious, no candle having been produced.1 A long pause succeeded, which was at last broken by Branwell saying in a lazy manner, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ This was re-echoed by Emily and Anne.

Taby: ‘Wha’ ya may go t’bed.’

Branwell: ‘I’d rather do anything than that.’

Charlotte: ‘You’re so glum tonight. Well, suppose we had each an island.’

Branwell: ‘If we had, I would choose the Island of Man.’

Charlotte: ‘And I would choose the Isle of Wight.’

Emily: ‘The Isle of Arran for me.’

Anne: ‘And mine should be Guernsey.’

Charlotte: ‘The Duke of Wellington should be my chief man.’2

Branwell: ‘Herries should be mine.’

Emily: ‘Walter Scott should be mine.’

Anne: ‘I should have Bentinck.’3

Here our conversation was interrupted by the, to us, dismal sound of the clock striking seven and we were summoned off to bed. The next day we added several others to our list of names till we had got almost all the chief men in the kingdom.

After this, for a long time nothing worth noticing occurred. In June 1828, we erected a school on a fictitious island which was to contain a thousand children. The manner of the building was as follows: the island was fifty miles in circumference and certainly it appeared more like the region of enchantment or a beautiful fiction than sober reality. In some parts made terribly sublime by mighty rocks, rushing streams and roaring cataracts with here and there an oak either scathed by lightning or withered by time and, as if to remind the lonely passenger of what it once was, a green young scion twisting round its old grey trunk. In other parts of the island there were greenswards glittering, fountains springing in the flowery meadows or among the pleasant woods where fairies were said to dwell. Its borders embroidered by the purple, violet and the yellow primroses and the air perfumed by the sweet wild flowers and ringing with the sound of the cuckoo and turtledove or the merry music of the blackbird and thrush, formed the beautiful scenery.

One speciality around the palace school was a fine large park in which the beautiful undulations of hill and plain variegated the scenery which might otherwise have been monotonous. Shady groves crowned the hills, pure streams wandered through the plains watering the banks with a lovelier verdure, as clear lakes whose borders are overhung by the drooping willow, the elegant larch, the venerable oak and the evergreen laurel seemed the crystal, emerald-framed mirrors of some huge giant. Often at times it is said of one of the most beautiful of these lakes, that, when all is quiet, the music of fairyland may be heard and a tiny barge of red sandalwood, its mast of amber, its sails and cordage of silk and its oars of fine ivory may be seen skimming across the lake and, when its small crew have gathered the water lily plant, back again and, landing on the flowery bank, spread their transparent wings and melt away at the sound of mortal footsteps like the mists of the morning before the splendour of the sun.

From a beautiful grove of winter roses and twining woodbine, towers a magnificent palace of pure white marble whose elegant and finely wrought pillars and majestic turrets seem the work of mighty Genii and not of feeble men. Ascending a flight of marble steps you come to a grand entrance which leads into a hall surrounded by Corinthian pillars of white marble. In the midst of the hall is a colossal statue holding, in each hand, a vase of crystal from which rushes a stream of clear water and, breaking into a thousand diamonds and pearls, falls into a basin of pure gold and, disappearing through an opening, rises again in different parts of the park in the form of brilliant fountains – these, falling, part into numerous rills which, winding through the ground, throw themselves into a river which runs into the sea.

At the upper end of the hall was a grove of orange trees bearing the golden fruit and fragrant blossoms, often upon the same branch. From this hall you pass into another splendid and spacious apartment, all hung with rich, deep, crimson velvet and from the grand dome is suspended a magnificent lustre of fine gold, the drops of which are pure crystal. The whole length of the room run long sofas covered also with crimson velvet. At each end are chimneypieces of dove-colour Italian marble, the pillars of which are of the Corinthian order, fluted and wreathed with gold. From this, we pass into a smaller but very elegant room, the sofas of which are covered with light-blue velvet flowered with silver and surrounded with small white marble columns.

And now from fine halls and splendid drawing rooms, I must begin to describe scenes of a very different nature. In the hall of the fountain, behind a statue, is a small door over which is drawn a curtain of white silk. This door, when opened, discovers a small apartment, at the further end of which is a very large iron door which leads to a long dark passage at the end of which is a flight of steps leading to a subterranean dungeon which I shall now endeavour to describe.