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I wish all reviewers believed 'Currer Bell' to be a man; they would be more just to him. You will, I know, keep measuring me by some standard of what you deem becoming to my sex; where I am not what you consider graceful, you will condemn me. All mouths will be open against that first chapter; and that first chapter is true as the Bible, nor is it exceptionable.
But while the existence of Currer Bell, the author, was like a piece of a dream to the quiet inhabitants of Haworth Parsonage, who went on with their uniform household life, their cares for their brother being its only variety, the whole reading-world of England was in a ferment to discover the unknown author.
But when forgetting the chivalrous spirit of the good and noble Southey, who said: "In reviewing anonymous works myself, when I have known the authors I have never mentioned them, taking it for granted they had sufficient reasons for avoiding the publicity" the Quarterly reviewer goes on into gossiping conjectures as to who Currer Bell really is, and pretends to decide on what the writer may be from the book, I protest with my whole soul against such want of Christian charity.
"A few; but I have never published any." "Some day you will write a great book, a book that will live. You will be a second Currer Bell." "Ah, how I adore 'Jane Eyre," said Bertha, in a low, intense voice. "Currer Bell has a great soul; she lifts the curtain, she reveals to you her heart." "I wish I could read 'Jane Eyre' again," said Florence.
Oliphant, as it inflamed the reviewer in The Quarterly, and made Charles Kingsley think that Currer Bell was coarse. Their state of mind is incredible to us now. For what did poor Jane do, after all? Nobody could possibly have had more respect for the ten commandments. For all Rochester's raging, the ten commandments remain exactly where they were.
The Quarterly, to do it justice, argued that Currer Bell was a man, for only a man would have betrayed such ignorance of feminine resources as to make Jane Eyre, on a night alarm, "hurry on a frock and shawl". The reasoning passed. Nobody saw that such a man would be as innocent as any parson's daughter.
Not only did "The Professor" return again to try his chance among the London publishers, but she began, in this time of care and depressing inquietude, in those grey, weary, uniform streets; where all faces, save that of her kind doctor, were strange and untouched with sunlight to her, there and then, did the brave genius begin "Jane Eyre". Read what she herself says: "Currer Bell's book found acceptance nowhere, nor any acknowledgment of merit, so that something like the chill of despair began to invade his heart."
By this time, "Airedale, Wharfedale, Calderdale, and Ribblesdale" all knew the place of residence of Currer Bell. She compared herself to the ostrich hiding its head in the sand; and says that she still buries hers in the heath of Haworth moors; but "the concealment is but self-delusion." Indeed it was.
At the time of the decease of her master, Currer's daughters, Clotel and Althesa, were aged respectively sixteen and fourteen years, and both, like most of their own sex in America, were well grown. Currer early resolved to bring her daughters up as ladies, as she termed it, and therefore imposed little or no work upon them.
Smith, Elder & Co. expressed their willingness to consider favourably a new work in three volumes which "Currer Bell" informed them he was writing; and by October 16, 1847, the tale "Jane Eyre" was accepted, printed, and published. V. The Coming of Success
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