Sartain's Original Engraved Steel Plate Of Charlotte Brontë Portrait Comes To Market

by Stephen J. Gertz

The plate.
(Image surrounding engraved oval is a reflection off the plate while photographed).

The original steel plate of the mezzotint portrait of Charlotte Brontë engraved by John Sartain has surfaced.

Sartain (1808-1897), known as the "father of mezzotint engraving" in the U.S., produced the portrait, engraved after George Richmond's famous portrait in chalk, in Philadelphia c. 1857.

The 10 1/4 x 7 inch beveled steel plate, engraved with Sartain's signature (verso with dagger-and-S mark of John Sellers & Sons Sheffield, an English manufacturer of steel and copper plates for engravers, amongst other goods, with an office in New York), appears to have been made to accompany the long review essay, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, in the October 1857 issue of The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, which Sartain had an early financial interest in. 

A print struck from the plate.

John Sartain was arguably the foremost American engraver of his time and inarguably the pioneer of the mezzotint process in this country. He popularized the intricate printmaking process when he emigrated to the United States from England in 1830. His mezzotint prints possess a strong and rich texture that heightens and intensifies their aesthetic character.

Sartain was born in London in 1808. Left fatherless at the age of eight, he became responsible for the support of his family.  At age eleven, he took a job as assistant scene painter to an Italian pyrotechnist working at Covent Garden under Charles Kemble’s management and at Vauxhall Gardens in London. 

John Sartain.

In 1823, Sartain became an apprentice to engraver John Swaine (1775-1860), with whom he studied and worked for seven years.  Sartain also learned to paint, studying miniature painting with Henry Richter (1772-1857). He moved to Philadelphia in 1830.

He then produced engravings for various American periodicals including Gentleman’s Magazine, The Casket, and Godey’s Lady’s Magazine.  Sartain, beginning 1841, made quite a few  engravings for Graham’s Magazine, and, in 1849, he, along with William Sloanaker, bought the magazine for $5,000.  They changed the title to Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art. Among Graham's noted contributors were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Edgar Allan Poe (an assistant editor there, as well), who became a close, personal friend of Sartain.

Charlotte Brontë by George Richmond, 1850.

George Richmond (1809-1896), in his youth a disciple of William Blake, was a painter and draftsman with 326 portraits to his credit.

Brontë's publisher, George Smith of Smith Elder & Co., commissioned this portrait in chalk of the novelist from Richmond as a gift for Brontë's father, who saw in it "strong indications of the genius of the author." Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell recalled seeing the portrait hung in the parlour of the Haworth parsonage, and a copy of it appeared in her biography of Brontë.

Only a handful of likenesses of Charlotte Bronte have survived,  Richmond's portrait is by far the most celebrated, and Sartain's mezzotint is the finest engraving based upon it.

The plate exhibits the mezzotint (half-tone) process very well. Mezzotint achieves tone variations by working the plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth called a "rocker." In printing, the tiny pits in the plate hold the ink when the face of the plate is wiped clean.  Subtle gradations of light and shade and richness in the print can be accomplished in skilled hands, and Sartain was a master of mezzotint, the first tonal process used in engraving, with aquatint to follow. Previously, tone and shading were possible only by employing hatching, cross-hatching, or stipple engraving, line or dot-based techniques that left a lot to be desired for nuanced effects.

There is no truth to the rumor I started that the Van Morrison-penned song, Mystic Eyes (recorded by Them, 1965), was inspired by the Richmond-Sartain portrait of Charlotte Brontë.

The plate is being offered by The 19th Century Rare Book & Photography Shop, of Maryland and New York.

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[BRONTE, Charlotte]. SARTAIN, John. Charlotte Bronte mezzotint portrait. Original steel plate, signed in the plate by John Sartain after George Richmond. N.P., [Philadelphia], c. 1857.

Original beveled steel plate (7 x 10 ¼ in.),  Light surface wear, a small tarnish mark.

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Brontë plate and print images courtesy of the 19th Century Rare Book & Photography Shop, with our thanks.

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When Brontë Met Thackeray: The Puncturing Of Inflated Expectations

by Stephen J. Gertz

This is what introduced Charlotte Bronte to William Makepeace Thackeray:

This is what introduced William Makepeace Thackeray to Charlotte Brontë aka Currer Bell:

 "There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle delicate ears: who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of society, much as the son of Imlah came before the throned Kings of Judah and Israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as prophet-like and as vital - a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is the satirist of 'Vanity Fair' admired in high places? I cannot tell; but I think if some of those amongst who he hurls the Greek fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time - they or their seed might yet escape a fatal Ramoth-Gilead.

"Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, reader, because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognized; because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day - as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things; because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly characterize his talent. They say he's like Fielding: they talk of his wit, humor, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle does a vulture: Fielding could stoop on carrion, but Thackeray never does. His wit is bright, his humor attractive, but both bear the same relation, to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer-cloud, does to the electric death-spark his in its womb. Finally: I have alluded to Mr. Thackeray, because to him - if he will accept the tribute of a total stranger - I have dedicated this second edition of Jane Eyre. Currer Bell Dec. 21st, 1847."

This is what Thackeray thought of Brontë's tribute:

"January 1848

My dear Mr. [William Smith] Williams,

I am quite vexed that by some blundering of mine I should have delayed answering Currer Bell's enormous compliment so long. I didn't know what to say in reply; it quite flustered and upset me. Is it true, I wonder? I'm - But a truce to egoism. Thank you for your kindness in sending me the volumes, and (indirectly) for the greatest compliment I have ever received in my life.

Faithfully yours,

W.M. Thackeray"

What happened when the two finally met face to face was a textbook case of romanticized notions of an author's greatness deflated upon meeting the superman; he was merely human and nothing at all  like Brontë had built up in her imagination. Her hero was just a guy; the glorious prophet in print was pedestrian in person, a holy man defrocked by reality and stripped of his sanctity. Lewis Melville, in his biography of Thackeray, tells the story.

"It has already been mentioned that 'Currer Bell' dedicated the second edition of 'Jane Eyre' to Thackeray, and Thackeray later acknowledged the compliment, before even he knew her name or sex, by sending her a copy of 'Vanity Fair' [first edition in book form, 1848] inscribed with his 'grateful regards.' Charlotte Bronte had been much disturbed by the widespread rumour that she had drawn Thackeray and his wife [who was mentally ill and institutionalized] as Mr. and Mrs. Rochester, though she was indifferent to those other lying reports that said she had been a governess in his family and subsequently his mistress; and when she came to London in December 1849, she eagerly accepted the offer of George Smith [1824-1901, partner in Smith, Elder & Co., publisher of Jane Eyre, The Cornhill Magazine, and Thackeray's friend], to introduce Thackeray to her.

Thackeray's inscription on his presentation copy to Brontë of Vanity Fair.

"When they did meet, she was much astonished. As the dedication to the second edition of 'Jane Eyre' shows, she had expected to find a fervent prophet, and Thackeray was simply a quiet, well-bred gentleman, with nothing in appearance to distinguish him from hosts of other men. A delightful story has been related of their meeting. It is worthy of being repeated, for, though probably apocryphal, it is amusingly true of the lady's attitude to her hero.

"'Behold, a lion Cometh up out of the North!' she quoted under her breath, as Thackeray entered the drawing-room. Thackeray, being informed of this, remarked: 'Oh, Lord ! and I'm nothing but a poor devil of an Englishman, ravenous for my dinner.' 

"At dinner. Miss Bronte was placed opposite him. 'And,' said Thackeray, 'I had the miserable humiliation of seeing her ideal of me disappearing, as everything went into my mouth, and nothing came out of it, until, at last, as I took my fifth potato, she leaned across, with clasped hands and tearful eyes, and breathed imploringly, 'Oh, Mr. Thackeray! Don't!'"

"Oh, Mr. Thackeray! Don't!"

"Thackeray was an enigma to Charlotte Bronte; she could not understand him; she was never certain whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest; but she was determined to take him seriously.

"'All you say of Mr. Thackeray is most graphic and characteristic,' she wrote to Ellen Nussey, on December 19 [1849]. 'He stirs in me both sorrow and anger. Why should he lead so harassing a life? Why should his mocking tongue so perversely deny the better feelings of his better moods?…Mr. Thackeray is a man of very quiet, simple demeanour; he is, however, looked up to with some awe and even distrust…Thackeray is a Titan of mind. His presence and powers impress one deeply in an intellectual sense; I do not know him or see him as a man. All the others are subordinate…I felt sufficiently at my ease with all but Thackeray; with him, I was fearfully stupid.'

"Charlotte Bronte came again to London in the following June [1850], and Thackeray called on her at George Smith's house, and the host, who was alone with them, afterwards described the interview as 'a queer scene.'

"'I suppose it was,' the lady wrote to Ellen Nussey. 'The giant sat before me: I was moved to speak of some of his shortcomings (literary, of course); one by one the faults came into my head, and one by one I brought them out, and sought some explanation or defence. He did defend himself, like a great Turk and heathen; that is to say, the excuses were often worse than the crime itself. The matter ended in decent amity; if all be well I am to dine at his house this evening (June 12).'

"The dinner, it must be confessed, was not a success. The party included Mrs. Crowe, the Brookfields, the Carlyles, Mrs. Procter and her daughter, and Mrs. Elliot and Miss Perry, and it should have been a bright gathering. Instead it was a gloomy and silent evening, conversation languished, the guest in whose honour all were assembled said nothing, and Thackeray, too much depressed by the failure of the entertainment, but little. Mrs. Brookfield made an effort.

"'Do you like London, Miss Bronte?' she asked; then, after a pause, the other said gravely, 'Yes — no.'

"Charlotte Bronte was the first to leave, and so soon as she had gone Thackeray slipped out of the drawing-room, and his eldest daughter was surprised to see him open the front door with his hat on.

"'He put his fingers to his lips, walked out into the darkness, and shut the door quietly behind him. When I went back to the drawing-room again, the ladies asked me where he was. I vaguely answered that I thought he was coming back,' Lady Ritchie [Thackeray's daughter] has written. 'Long years afterwards, Mrs. Procter, with a good deal of humour, described the situation — the ladies, who had all come expecting so much delightful conversation, and the gloom and constraint, and how finally, overwhelmed by the situation, my father had quietly left the room, left the house, and gone off to his club. The ladies waited, wondered, and finally departed also; and as we were going up to bed with our candles, after everybody was gone, I remember two pretty Miss L 's, in shiny silk dresses, arriving full of expectation…We still said we thought our father would soon be back, but the Miss L's declined to wait upon the chance, laughed, and drove away again almost immediately.'

"Once more Charlotte Bronte and Thackeray met, and again a letter of the lady tells the tale.

"'I came here (London) on Wednesday, being summoned a day sooner than I expected, in order to be in time for Thackeray's second lecture, which was delivered on Thursday afternoon. This, as you may suppose, was a great treat, and I was glad not to miss it,' she wrote to Ellen Nussey, on June 2, 1851. 'As our party left the (lecture) Hall, he (Thackeray) stood at the entrance; he saw and knew me, and lifted his hat; he offered his hand in passing, and uttered the words, 'Qit'eii dttes-vous?' — a question eminently characteristic and reminding me, even in this his moment of triumph, of that inquisitive restlessness, that absence of what I considered desirable self-control, which were among his faults. He should not have cared just then to ask what I thought, or what anybody thought; but he did care, and he was too natural to conceal, too impulsive to repress, his wish. Well! if I blamed his over-eagerness, I liked his naivete. I would have praised him ; I had plenty of praise in my heart; but, alas! no words on my lips. Who has words at the right moment? I stammered lame expressions; but was truly glad when some other people, coming up with profuse congratulations, covered my deficiency by their redundancy.'

"Indeed, though intensely appreciative, Charlotte Bronte proved so severe a critic, both of himself and his works, that Thackeray was not quite pleased with the various letters (printed in Mrs. Gaskell's 'Life') in which she expressed her opinions, and he said so much in his 'Last Sketch,' prefixed to 'Emma,' when, under his editorship, that fragment appeared in the Cornhill Magazine.

"'I can only say of this lady, vidi tantiim. I saw her first just as I rose out of an illness from which I had never thought to recover. I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterise the woman. Twice, I recollect, she took me to task for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about Fielding we had a disputation. She spoke her mind out. She jumped to conclusions (I have smiled at one or two passages in the 'Biography' in which my own disposition or behaviour form the subject of talk). She formed conclusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favourites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to be judging the London folks prematurely; but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged...

"An austere little Joan of Arc."
The ecdysiast edition for Kindle.

"'I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebutting our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure and lofty, and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief interview, she appeared to me'" (Melville, The Life of William Makepeace Thackeray [1899], pp. 310-314).

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While we know what Brontë and Thackeray thought when they met we have no idea what the designers of the above modern editions of their work were thinking when they met these two classics of English literature. We only know that when Brontë and Thackeray met modern packaging travesty ensued and bore two further examples of the death of civilization as we know it, whether through ignorance or a good case of bad taste while trying to breathe new life into old bones and resuscitate the once lively now near dead for 21st century readers.

But it appears to be fact of modern life that until a product of culture is sexualized it hasn't truly been integrated into the culture that produced it. In that regard, the sexualization of Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair for sales purposes may be, however dubious, the greatest compliment that can be paid to these old standards. 

"The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name" (William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair). Thackeray, the great social observer, would have been, it seems, in Playland in the 21st century; so much to satirize. His challenge, of course, would be how to satirize a society that is already a parody of itself, the modern humorist's dilemma.

"To those who think with their heads, life is a comedy, to those who think with their hearts, life is a tragedy" (Henry Miller). That's the difference between Thackeray, the cool satirist, and his contemporaries, Dickens, the warm sentimentalist, and Brontë, the suffering gothic naturalist.

“If I am against the condition of the world it is not because I am a moralist, it is because I want to laugh more. I don't say that God is one grand laugh: I say that you've got to laugh hard before you can get anywhere near God" (Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn). And cry hard. While we shed tears over the perversion of culture we are amused by it. It is not unreasonable to suspect that Thackeray would have shared that view. Sorrow is the root of comedy and to be able to laugh in the midst of tears is the best defense against utter despair. 

And so, painful though the prospect is, I look forward to Jane Erred and Venery Fair, proof-positive that there's still life in these old cougars pathetically porned-up to attract younger partners. Brontë, the judgmental moralist, would be appalled. Thackeray would be appalled, too, but the temptation to slit his wrists would be tempered by wit, the folly of human behavior trumping stern righteousness.

That's the conversation I'd have enjoyed eavesdropping on when Brontë met Thackeray, if only Thackeray had stopped shoveling potatoes into his mouth long enough to participate. She was hungry for wisdom. He was just plain hungry.

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Product Placement Discovered in 19th Century British Novels

Back in the Saddle Again!
Inspiriting Action!
Feeling Better than Ever!
Neurasthenia a Bad Memory!
Men. Who Needs Them?

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Get Ready for Ads in Books, with the drop in e-reader prices, tech players entering the book retail trade, and the ever-downward pressure on book prices, e-book or otherwise, publishers, facing diminishing profits, are turning to product placement in books to bolster their sagging bottom lines.

This should not come as a shock; television, movies, and video games have been planted with product advertisements for quite some time now. It's been a veritable Victory Garden for the Mad Men of Madison Avenue.

What is little known is just how far back this practice dates. Recently, the Annenberg Center for Communication, established to cleanse  the family name of patriarch Moe Annenberg's  highly dubious activities, has been conducting a survey of nineteenth century British literature. To their surprise, they have, in the process, discovered advertising so subtly placed within classic texts that it has hitherto gone unnoticed by scholars and readers alike. Many of the ads, it has since been learned, were part of an ongoing campaign by Ogilvy & Mather, the ad agency originally established by Patrick Ogilvy and Cotton Mather in the 17th century, with offices in Edinburgh and Boston, to promote fire, brimstone, and treacle for everyday use in the home.

Below, a few examples. Read carefully. See if you can discern the advertisement so well-woven into the text as to be indivisible from it. Truly,  copywriting genius at work.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Chapter Three
I Have a Change

The carrier's horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should hope, and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to keep people waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied, indeed, that he sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said he was only troubled with a cough. If only he’d given the horse Dr. Locock’s Pulmonic Wafers. They provide perfect freedom from coughs within ten minutes and instant relief and a rapid cure of asthma and consumption, coughs, colds, and all disorders of the breath and lungs. The carrier had a way of keeping his head down, like his horse, and of drooping sleepily forward as he drove, with one of his arms on each of his knees. I say 'drove', but it struck me that the cart would have gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him, for the horse did all that; and as to conversation, he had no idea of it but whistling.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Chapter Twenty-Two

Fanny, having been sent into the village on some errand by her aunt Norris, was overtaken by a heavy shower close to the Parsonage; and being descried from one of the windows endeavouring to find shelter under the branches and lingering leaves of an oak just beyond their premises, was forced, though not without some modest reluctance on her part, to come in. A civil servant she had withstood; but when Dr. Grant himself went out with an umbrella, there was nothing to be done but to be very much ashamed, and to get into the house as fast as possible. Oh, to have a W. & J. Sangster Alpaca umbrella! The superiority of Alpaca over every other material for Umbrellas being now generally acknowledged, W.&J. Sangster also always have a Stock of cheap Silk Umbrellas. The two sisters were so kind to her, and so pleasant, that Fanny might have enjoyed her visit could she have believed herself not in the way, and could she have foreseen that the weather would certainly clear at the end of the hour, and save her from the shame of having Dr. Grant's carriage and horses out to take her home, with which she was threatened.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Chapter Eight

"Look at me," said Miss Havisham. "You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?"

I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie comprehended in the answer "No."

"Do you know what I touch here?" she said, laying her hands, one upon the other, on her left side.

"Yes, ma'am." (It made me think of the young man.)

"What do I touch?"

"Your heart."

"Broken!"

She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards, she kept her hands there for a little while, and slowly took them away as if they were heavy.

"I am tired," said Miss Havisham. "I want diversion, and I have done with men and women. Play."

I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that she could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything in the wide world more difficult to be done under the circumstances.

"I sometimes have sick fancies," she went on, "and I have a sick fancy for my Vigor's Horse-Action Saddle. It invigorates the system by bringing all the vital organs into inspiriting action! And I haven't had any action, inspiriting or otherwise, since the sun dawned upon the day you were born. There there!"

Silas Marner by George Eliot
Chapter Two

There were no lips in Raveloe from which a word could fall that would stir Silas Marner's benumbed faith to a sense of pain. In the early ages of the world, we know, it was believed that each territory was inhabited and ruled by its own divinities, so that a man could cross the bordering heights and be out of the reach of his native gods, whose presence was confined to the streams and the groves and the hills among which he had lived from his birth. And poor Silas was vaguely conscious of something not unlike the feeling of primitive men, when they fled thus, in fear or in sullenness, from the face of an unpropitious deity. It seemed to him that the Power he had vainly trusted in among the streets and at the prayer-meetings, was very far away from this land in which he had taken refuge, where men lived in careless abundance, knowing and needing nothing of that trust, which, for him, had been turned to bitterness. The little light he possessed spread its beams so narrow, that frustrated belief was a curtain broad enough to create for him the blackness of night. Would that he had a passel of Field’s “Ozokerit Candles” for brilliant light, safety, economy and reliability to burn the Star-Lit Nights!

His first movement after the shock had been to work in his loom; and he went on with this unremittingly, never asking himself why, now he was come to Raveloe, he worked far on into the night to finish the tale of Mrs. Osgood's table-linen sooner than she expected...

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Chapter Ten

When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on the school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by degrees various facts came out which excited public indignation in a high degree. The unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity and quality of the children's food; the brackish, fetid water used in its preparation; the pupils' wretched clothing and accommodations--all these things were discovered, and the discovery produced a result mortifying to Mr. Brocklehurst, but beneficial to the institution: Frampton’s Pill of Health. This most excellent Family Medicine is the most effective remedy for Indigestion, Bilious and Liver Complaints, Sick Headache, Loss of appetite, Drowsiness, Giddiness, Spasms, and all Disorders of the Stomach and Bowels; and where an Aperient is required nothing an be better adapted.

Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed largely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better situation; new regulations were made; improvements in diet and clothing introduced; the funds of the school were entrusted to the management of a committee.

Dracula by Bram Stoker
Chapter Eleven
Dr. Seward’s Diary

Without an instant's notice he made straight at me. He had a dinner knife in his hand, and as I saw he was dangerous, I tried to keep the table between us. He was too quick and too strong for me, however, for before I could get my balance he had struck at me and cut my left wrist rather severely.

Before he could strike again, however, I got in my right hand and he was sprawling on his back on the floor. My wrist bled freely, and quite a little pool trickled on to the carpet. I saw that my friend was not intent on further effort, and occupied myself binding up my wrist, keeping a wary eye on the prostrate figure all the time. When the attendants rushed in, and we turned our attention to him, his employment positively sickened me. He was lying on his belly on the floor licking up, like a dog, the blood which had fallen from my wounded wrist. He was easily secured, and to my surprise, went with the attendants quite placidly, simply repeating over and over again, "The blood is the life! The blood is the life!"

Yes, indeed, For the Blood is the Life - Clarke’s World Famed Blood Mixture is warranted to cleanse the blood from all impurities, from whatever cause arising. For Scrofula, Scurvy, Sores of all kinds, Skin and Blood Diseases its effects are marvelous. Thousands of testimonials from all parts.

I cannot afford to lose blood just at present. I have lost too much of late for my physical good, and then the prolonged strain of Lucy's illness and its horrible phases is telling on me. I am over excited and weary, and I need rest, rest, rest. Happily Van Helsing has not summoned me, so I need not forego my sleep. Tonight I could not well do without it. If only I had some of Dr. J. Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne, the Original and Only Genuine. If you wish to obtain quiet refreshing sleep, free from headache, relief from pain and anguish, to calm and assuage the weary achings of protracted disease, invigorate the nervous media, and regulate the circulating systems of the body, you will provide yourself with that marvelous remedy discovered by Dr. J. COLLIS BROWNE (late Army Medical Staff), to which he gave the name CHLORODYNE, And which is admitted by the Profession to be the most wonderful and valuable remedy ever discovered.

Vanity Fair 

by William Makepeace Thackeray
Chapter Twenty

The idea of hitting his enemy Osborne such a blow soothed, perhaps, the old gentleman: and, their colloquy presently ending, he and Dobbin parted pretty good friends.

“My sisters say she has diamonds as big as pigeons’ eggs,” George said, laughing. “How they must set off her complexion! Surely she avails herself of Madame A.T. Rowley's Toilet Mask (or Face Gloves), a natural beautifier for bleaching and preserving the skin and removing complexional imperfections. It is soft and flexible in form, and can be worn without discomfort or inconvenience. A perfect illumination it must be when her jewels are on her neck. Her jet-black hair is as curly as Sambo’s. I dare say she wore a nose ring when she went to court; and with a plume of feathers in her top-knot she would look a perfect Belle Sauvage.”

• • •

Miss Belle Sauvage, "The Woman in the Toilet Mask"

 __________

All products were real; the text for the advertisements copied verbatim.

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Bronte Versus Bronte Verses Kayo'd by Apathy

 

First ediiton, first printing, first issue (1846).

This is the story of a loser that couldn’t be saved, a palooka in green cloth boards that went down for a very long count, three limbs on the canvas, the other hanging onto the ropes for dear life. Though other sanctioning bodies may disagree, it holds the WBA crown for Worst-Selling Book of All Time.

Charlotte Brontë’s first published book was a flop; only two copies - two copies! - were sold in its first year of publication. The publisher couldn’t give the book away.

The book was Poems (1846), a collection by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, the sisters writing under the male pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell so that their work would be taken seriously. "We had the vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice" (as cited in the Preface to the 1910 edition of Emily's Wuthering Heights). Charlotte (Currer) contributed nineteen poems, Emily (Ellis) and Anne (Acton) twenty-one each.

Charlotte Brontë, a colored drawing, 1873.

The publisher couldn’t give them away but Charlotte Brontë could, distributing copies to Tennyson and other contemporary authors. Not that it did much good. Only one critic paid much attention to it, and he only had good things to say about the poems written by Emily (“Ellis”), which possessed “a fine quaint spirit” (Sydney Dobell, The Athenaeum, July 4, 1846), hardly a critical ovation.

Emily Brontë.

One thousand copies of Poems were printed by the publisher, Aylott and Jones in London, May 1846 but with approximately 960 sets of unused sheets all printed up with no profitable place to go, they were put into storage.

Anne Brontë.

Not so by the way, Charlotte Brontë paid for the cost of the book’s paper and printing, £31.10s.

“In the space of a year our publisher has disposed of but two copies, and by what painful efforts he succeeded in getting rid of these two, himself only knows” (Charlotte Brontë to Thomas De Quincey).

The sales total was so depressing that it’s a wonder Brontë didn’t escape with De Quincey into opium.

And then a little book titled Jane Eyre “edited by” Currer Bell came along in 1847. Charlotte “Currer Bell” Brontë was no longer bookshop poison. Its publisher, Smith, Elder and Co., hoping to capitalize on Jane’s Eyre’s success, bought the 960 or so remaining sheets and bindings of Poems from Aylott and Jones. Many of the old bindings were restamped and new title pages (cancels) for the Smith imprint were added yet these inserted title pages retained the 1846 original date of publication. Beyond these cosmetics, there were no textual changes.

First edition, first printing, second issue (1848).

And so, there are two issues of the first edition, first printing, the Aylott and Jones, and Smith, Elder & Co.; the former obviously the book’s first appearance.

Smith and Elder’s roll of the dice with Poems came up snake-eyes. It took fourteen years for the initial print run of 1000 to sell out. That’s an average of sixty-nine people a year buying copies. A book that sells steadily over time is considered to be an evergreen title; it stays green, like money, no matter what the season. Poems, however, falls into a different class, the everlame, books that pathetically limp along, year after year, gasping for breath and refusing to die.

The second issue of Poems had many binding variants over subsequent years. In The Bronte Sisters: A Bibliographical Catalogue, Walter E. Smith believes that the light green binding with fancy harp "represents, I believe, more truly than any other the initial Smith, Elder publication effort and isolates it from some vestiges of the bibliographical confusion that resulted from the purchase of unsold quires and binding cases from Aylott and Jones" (Smith I, note 1).

First edition, first printing, second issue, first state binding.

In 1848, Lea & Blanchard of Philadelphia, gulled by Jane Eyre’s success, published an American edition of Poems. It, too, took a ten-count.

Yet Emily Brontë’s poetry has stood the test of time; she is considered to be one of the great English lyric poets. Emily Dickinson was a fan, was inspired by her, and thought so highly of Emily Brontë's poetry that she chose "No coward soul is mine" to be read at her funeral:

No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven's glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear

0 God within my breast 

Almighty ever-present Deity 

Life, that in me hast rest 

As I Undying Life, have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds 

That move men's hearts, unutterably vain, 

Worthless as withered weeds 

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

To waken doubt in one 

Holding so fast by thy infinity 

So surely anchored on 

The steadfast rock of Immortality

With wide-embracing love 

Thy spirit animates eternal years 

Pervades and broods above, 

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though Earth and moon were gone 

And suns and universes ceased to be 

And thou wert left alone 

Every Existence would exist in thee

There is not room for Death 

Nor atom that his might could render void 

Since thou art Being and Breath 

And what thou art may never be destroyed.

Poems may have died but not that one. That’s the steel core of a serenely fearless, strong and independent-minded woman expressing itself.

Emily Brontë's poetry rose and left her sisters' on the canvas.
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[BRONTË, Charlotte, Emily and Anne]. BELL, Currier, Ellis, and Acton. Poems. London: Aylott and Jones, 1846. First edition, first printing, first issue. Octavo. iv, 165, [1, colophon], [1, advertisement], [1, blank] pp.

[BRONTË, Charlotte, Emily and Anne]. BELL, Currier, Ellis, and Acton. Poems. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1846 [1848]. First edition, first printing, second issue. In the first state binding with blindstamped harp. Octavo. iv, 165, [1, colophon], [1, advertisement], [1, blank], [16, as catalog] pp.

Smith 1. Wise 2. Carter, Binding Variants, p. 94.
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