brilliance, drawn himself close to Lord Nelson by using his title, Duke of Brontë. He has reinvented himself.
He recalls the blacksmith pointing him out to a passerby who had brought his horse for shoeing.
“See this peasant boy, with his blackened hands and face,” he had said. “He is one of nature’s true gentlemen.” He must have been six or perhaps seven and working hard for a blacksmith in his forge, bending over his fire, the sparks in the air. It was a moment he would never forget. Pride and shame: I will become a real gentleman, I will. It had made him both proud and aware of his miserable condition. From that moment on, he had aped his betters, watching the way they ate and dressed and, above all, what they read.
He is ashamed of his parents and of his shame—particularly of his mother, that someone would find out that she had renounced her Catholicism on her marriage to his father. In the dead of the night, with everyone sleeping, he would hear her muttering her popish prayers in Latin.
He has taught his son Greek and Latin. He has let him read freely from all the books in his library and those of the wealthier families around them. Education has been his salvation, and he hopes it will save even these poor, plain girls. He has even allowed his girls to join the boy, to take a hand at a translation of Horace or Catullus. He has found Charlotte with Byron’s Don Juan , and remembering his own youth, he has not voiced his opprobrium.
He remembers the things his children brought back to him from their rambles on the moors: little Emily rushing into his study, smelling of wind and wildness, with a lapwing’s plume, a tuft of moss. Her gift reminds him of a line from one of his poems: Sweet Philomel and cooing dove. The milk-white thorn, the leafy spray. Not a bad line.
He remembers the Reverend Tighe’s amazement at his memory. He stood awkwardly, aware of his heavy boots, his ill-fitting trousers, his frayed shirt cuffs in the elegant parlor, before a company of amazed Evangelicals. Staring at the yellow silk curtains, the painted cream wainscoting, the silver, the flowers, he quoted passages from the Bible by chapter and verse. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. . . . For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” On and on he galloped through Romans fearlessly and without a fault, only coming to a halt when Tighe said, “Now this is the kind of mind useful to our cause,” smiling and turning to the others with a proprietary gesture, as if he had invented him.
That which has been taken for learning, for love of the Word of the Lord, for courage, he realizes now is also rage, one that wells up within him even now and has made him act foolishly. Perhaps he should have gone into the Army rather than the Church. Does he lack the empathy that his calling requires? Is that why he is being punished? Does he not know how to love even his own girl, who has been sitting so quietly at his side?
He remembers with shame now his disapproval of his poor wife’s innocent gay dress, which he had never allowed her to wear, but kept firmly locked away in a drawer.
Yet there were moments when his rage was not misplaced. He sees the crowd of raucous children, taunting the poor idiot boy and then pushing him into the dark, icy, swirling water, into which he plunged to drag the boy onto the bank and lay him down gently in the grass; he remembers rising from his bed in the middle of the night, stuffing the loaded pistols into his belt and tramping across wet moors, to succor the mill owner who had need of him during the Luddite uprising when misery had generated such hate for the machines and their masters who took away the workmen’s bread.
What an unexpected boon to have no demands at all made on me, to lie here idle and resting in the
He recalls the blacksmith pointing him out to a passerby who had brought his horse for shoeing.
“See this peasant boy, with his blackened hands and face,” he had said. “He is one of nature’s true gentlemen.” He must have been six or perhaps seven and working hard for a blacksmith in his forge, bending over his fire, the sparks in the air. It was a moment he would never forget. Pride and shame: I will become a real gentleman, I will. It had made him both proud and aware of his miserable condition. From that moment on, he had aped his betters, watching the way they ate and dressed and, above all, what they read.
He is ashamed of his parents and of his shame—particularly of his mother, that someone would find out that she had renounced her Catholicism on her marriage to his father. In the dead of the night, with everyone sleeping, he would hear her muttering her popish prayers in Latin.
He has taught his son Greek and Latin. He has let him read freely from all the books in his library and those of the wealthier families around them. Education has been his salvation, and he hopes it will save even these poor, plain girls. He has even allowed his girls to join the boy, to take a hand at a translation of Horace or Catullus. He has found Charlotte with Byron’s Don Juan , and remembering his own youth, he has not voiced his opprobrium.
He remembers the things his children brought back to him from their rambles on the moors: little Emily rushing into his study, smelling of wind and wildness, with a lapwing’s plume, a tuft of moss. Her gift reminds him of a line from one of his poems: Sweet Philomel and cooing dove. The milk-white thorn, the leafy spray. Not a bad line.
He remembers the Reverend Tighe’s amazement at his memory. He stood awkwardly, aware of his heavy boots, his ill-fitting trousers, his frayed shirt cuffs in the elegant parlor, before a company of amazed Evangelicals. Staring at the yellow silk curtains, the painted cream wainscoting, the silver, the flowers, he quoted passages from the Bible by chapter and verse. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. . . . For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” On and on he galloped through Romans fearlessly and without a fault, only coming to a halt when Tighe said, “Now this is the kind of mind useful to our cause,” smiling and turning to the others with a proprietary gesture, as if he had invented him.
That which has been taken for learning, for love of the Word of the Lord, for courage, he realizes now is also rage, one that wells up within him even now and has made him act foolishly. Perhaps he should have gone into the Army rather than the Church. Does he lack the empathy that his calling requires? Is that why he is being punished? Does he not know how to love even his own girl, who has been sitting so quietly at his side?
He remembers with shame now his disapproval of his poor wife’s innocent gay dress, which he had never allowed her to wear, but kept firmly locked away in a drawer.
Yet there were moments when his rage was not misplaced. He sees the crowd of raucous children, taunting the poor idiot boy and then pushing him into the dark, icy, swirling water, into which he plunged to drag the boy onto the bank and lay him down gently in the grass; he remembers rising from his bed in the middle of the night, stuffing the loaded pistols into his belt and tramping across wet moors, to succor the mill owner who had need of him during the Luddite uprising when misery had generated such hate for the machines and their masters who took away the workmen’s bread.
What an unexpected boon to have no demands at all made on me, to lie here idle and resting in the
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