The Very Closest Sympathy
On July 30th, 1818, Emily Jane Brontë was born in Thornton, West Yorkshire, England.
Emily didn’t often show enthusiasm for going to church and was usually loathed to enjoy herself in public, but her happy anticipation of Mendelssohn’s Paulus put on quite a display of smiles and excited fidgeting.
Also uninhibited by excitement, Anne grasped Emily’s hand, hoping she wouldn’t mind.
Emily endorsed Anne’s effort with a quick squeeze. “I have to catch up with his Songs without Words volumes. I believe there are eight now. I only have five.”
Finally Anne knew what Emily’s birthday present should be, just enough time to send away for it.
© from Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit by DM Denton
Although my novel Without the Veil Between focuses on Anne, Emily is essential to the narrative, whether they are together at Haworth, on an excursion to York, or separated for long periods of time.
Emily was an imaginative and liberating influence on dutiful, devout Anne, a constant and protective best friend who by example more than precept reminded her little sister to leave at least some of her spirit unfettered and even encouraged her to now and then step out of life’s responsibilities and live a little wildly, especially as mother earth beckoned her to.
For nature is constant still
For when the heart is free from care
Whatever meets the eye
Is bright, and every sound we hear
Is full of melody …
~ Anne Brontë, from Verses for Lady Geralda, 1836
Long after the Brontë sisters had died, Charlotte’s friend Ellen Nussey wrote in Reminisces of Charlotte Brontë that “(Emily) and Anne were like twins – inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption.”
What better way to enjoy time with Emily again than by reliving their habit of wandering west to meet only earth and sky. T heir dogs, like themselves, despite contrasting physiques and personalities, were intrinsically similar, especially in their need to frequently escape the stuffiness and limited amusement of being indoors.
© from Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit by DM Denton
From Pillar Portrait by Branwell Brontë
As children they formed an alliance apart from Charlotte, brother Branwell and the fictional world of Angria to invent their own imaginary kingdom of Gondal. The departure of Charlotte to Roe Head School meant they became even closer, but something more powerful than circumstance cemented their devotion: the innate ability to understand, unconditionally love, lighten, consolingly burden and so strengthen each other, to speak in silence as much as conversation, and, perhaps, most significantly, to create “the very closest sympathy” through the infinite sisterhood of their imaginations.
To Imagination by Emily Brontë
When weary with the long day’s care,
And earthly change from pain to pain,
And lost, and ready to despair,
Thy kind voice calls me back again
O my true friend, I am not lone
While thou canst speak with such a tone!
So hopeless is the world without,
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world where guile and hate and doubt
And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou and I and Liberty
Have undisputed sovereignty.
What matters it that all around
Danger and grief and darkness lie,
If but within our bosom’s bound
We hold a bright unsullied sky,
Warm with ten thousand mingled rays
Of suns that know no winter days?
Reason indeed may oft complain
For Nature’s sad reality,
And tell the suffering heart how vain
Its cherished dreams must always be;
And Truth may rudely trample down
The flowers of Fancy newly blown.
But thou art ever there to bring
The hovering visions back and breathe
New glories o’er the blighted spring
And call a lovelier life from death,
And whisper with a voice divine
Of real worlds as bright as thine.
I trust not to thy phantom bliss,
Yet still in evening’s quiet hour
With never-failing thankfulness I
welcome thee, benignant power,
Sure solacer of human cares
And brighter hope when hope despairs.
Emily Brontë’s fold-up writing desk and contents
Anne was less hesitant [than Charlotte] to being drawn into Emily’s simply lived yet creatively complex orbit; then Anne had grown up in it, been sustained by it, and found true friendship in it. She knew, welcoming the hope in that knowledge, that even as Emily seemed unsentimental, letting them go to their beds and disappointments and fears and useless efforts to change what couldn’t be changed, she was keeping a place for them by the fire of her imagination and fidelity.
© from Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit by DM Denton
Haworth Parsonage, painted in the 1970s by DM Denton©
What was complicated for her sisters and brother was simple for Emily: there was no going back to working for little profit to end up more impoverished. She settled once and for all into the confinement that unleashed her fantasies, escaping change except as she grew taller and stronger and unapologetically herself. “I am as God made me,” Charlotte reported Emily’s answer to the “silly” girls at the Pensionnat who ridiculed her clothes, walk, thoughts, and habits. Anne couldn’t decide if such certainty made Emily saintly or blasphemous. According to Charlotte it did the trick in stopping the harassment, so it would seem an enlightened declaration after all.
Emily knew her place and stuck with it without being stuck, like a solitary tree on the moor. She was as violently content, shaped by the wind yet unyielding, in motion without leaving the spot she was rooted in.
© from Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit by DM Denton
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