The Green Dwarf , a Tale of the Perfect Tense

If you like a dose of Victorian melodrama complete with an "unprincipled villain!", a stalwart Scottish hero and a tender heroine, plus battles, magic and some Gothic terror, I recommend The Green Dwarf.  

The Bard    John Martin, 1817  © Laing Art Gallery

This is a short novelette, written by Charlotte Bronte when she was seventeen, between her Roe Head schooldays and her first post as a teacher there.   Much of it is drawn from her and her siblings' juvenilia, all those tales and adventures inspired by the box of wooden toy soldiers her brother Branwell was given.  Isolated in Haworth parsonage,  Branwell and his sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, created the imaginary worlds of Angria and Gondal.   Much of their juvenilia was inspired by their reading of Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, the Arabian Nights Entertainment and the visionary landscapes of artist John Martin*, popular through his engravings.

 The Fire Worshippers, battle scene     John Martin (1789-1854)

 For this tale, Charlotte has taken the city of Verdopolis in Africa,  the setting for the "African Olympic Games" and its war with the Ashantee tribe, as the background to the romance between the lovely Lady Emily, her countenance of "a most fascinating but indescribable charm" and her beloved, the painter Mr Leslie.    Her artist hero is in fact the noble Scot, Lord St. Clair, but his humble disguise does not deceive his rival, the handsome but treacherous Colonel Percy, a man with "a spirit of deep, restless villainy".

The plot is convoluted, with several fey characters who are not what they seem, but under cover of darkness Colonel Percy double-crosses the lovers and abducts Lady Emily, to make her his wife. "Behold me, fair lady, and know into whose power you have fallen!"

Drawing of a  fair young lady, by Charlotte Bronte

©  British Library

Emily is all too human a heroine: she repudiates Percy's evil power over her with this stirring riposte:

 "Then here I remain till death or some happier chance relieves me, for not all the tortures that man's ingenuity could devise should ever induce me to marry one whose vices have sunk him so low in the ranks of humanity as yours have, one who openly renounces the dominion of honour, and declares that he has given himself up to the blind guidance of his own departed inclinations."...

but then - somewhat breathless? - she succumbs to Percy's taunts of how her uncle ("her careful and affectionate guardian") will be suffering at her disappearance:

"She leant her head upon her hand and burst into a flood of bitter tears".

Readers of Jane Eyre will note that Lady Emily is left in her gloomy prison to the care of her attendant "the withered hag Bertha".

Much of the story's charm is seventeen year old Charlotte's evident relish in her fantasy drama, larded with adjectives, but with some wonderful descriptions:
here is the Ashantee battle array at daybreak: "It was a gorgeous but terrific spectacle as the first sunbeams flashed on that dusky host, and lit up to fiercer radiance their bright weapons and all the barbarous magnificence of gold and gems in which most of the warriors were attired",

and here the forest at night:  "Darkly and dimly, branch rose above branch, each uplifting a thicker canopy of night like foliage, till not a single ray of light could find an opening by which to direct the belated travellers passing underneath."

Twilight in the Woodlands   John Martin  1850

©  Fitwilliam Museum

Despite the melodrama of plot, characters and language,  like a theatrical MC she firmly takes control and addresses her readers at regular intervals.

Introducing  the African Olympics, which is a pivotal occasion in the narrative,  "It is not my intention to give a full and detailed account of all that took place on that memorable day, I shall merely glance at the transactions which followed and then proceed to topics more nearly connected with my tale."

Further interjections dot the narrative :  "Having given the reader this necessary information I will now proceed with my narrative in a more detailed and less historical style…."With his opportune arrival my reader is already acquainted, … and "I must beg my reader to imagine that a space of six weeks has elapsed before he again beholds my hero…"

These interjections are Charlotte reining in her runaway enthusiasm for the story she is presenting, much like a teacher who has strayed far from the topic, returning to her text.
" It may now be as well to connect the broken thread of my rambling narrative before I proceed further … and now,  having cleared scores, I may trot on unencumbered. "

She herself describes The Green Dwarf as a brief and 'jejune' narrative,  but it is full of spirit and style,  with a clear underlying sense of its unreality, which her readers (originally her siblings)  are invited to share and enjoy.

Charlotte Bronte, 1816-1855,

 probably a posthumous portrait by John H. Thompson (1808-1890), a close friend of Branwell

© Bronte Parsonage Museum 

Extracts from The Green Dwarf  by Charlotte Bronte, 1833,   Hesperus Press 2003

*John Martin appears in the story as the character Edward de Lisle, a successful artist.

Letters from the Windward Islands

[The dressing-room] "seemed crowded after the emptiness of the rest of the house.  There was a carpet, the only one I had seen, a press made of some beautiful wood I did not recognize.  Under the open window a small writing-desk with paper, pens, and ink. "A refuge" I was thinking when someone said, 'This was Mr. Mason's room, sir, but he did not come here often.  He did not like the place.'  ...

.... I sat on the soft narrow bed and listened.  Not  a sound except the river. I might have been alone in the house.  There was a crude bookshelf made of three shingles strung together over the desk and I looked at the books, Byron's poems, novels by Sir Walter Scott, Confessions of an Opium Eater, some shabby brown volumes, and on the last shelf,  Life and Letters of...   The rest was eaten away.

  Dear Father, we have arrived from Jamaica after an uncomfortable few days.  This little estate in the Windward Islands is part of the family property and Antoinette is much attached to it.  She wished to get here as soon as possible.   All is well and has gone according to your plans and wishes.  I dealt of course with Richard Mason. ..... This place is very beautiful but my illness has left me too exhausted to appreciate it fully.  I will write again in a few days' time.

I reread this letter and added a postscript:
 
   I feel that I have left you too long without news for the bare announcement of my marriage was barely news.  I was down with fever for two weeks after I got to Spanish Town.  Nothing serious but I felt wretched enough.  I stayed with the Frasers, friends of the Masons.... It was difficult to think or write coherently.  In this cool and remote place it is called Granbois (the High Woods I suppose) I feel better already and my next letter will be longer and more explicit.

A cool and remote place...  And I wondered how they got their letters posted.  I folded mine and put it into a drawer of the desk.
As for my confused impressions they will never be written.  There are blanks in my mind that cannot be filled up."

Wide Sargasso Sea  Jean Rhys

Goose quills

"  'And what pledge am I to have for all this?'  said the Prior.
'When Isaac returns successful through your mediation,' said the outlaw, ' I swear by St. Hubert I will see that he pays thee the money in good silver, or I will reckon with him for it in such sort he had better have paid twenty such sums.'

'Well then, Jew,'  said Aymer, ' since I must needs meddle in this matter, let me have the use of thy writing-tablets -- though hold, rather than use thy pen, I would fast for twenty-four hours, and where shall I find one?'

'If your holy scruples can dispense with using the Jew's tablets, for the pen I can find a remedy,' said the yeoman; and bending his bow, he aimed his shaft at a wild goose which was soaring over their heads, the advanced-guard of a phalanx of his tribe which were winging their way to the distant and solitary fens of Holderness.  The bird came  fluttering down, transfixed with the arrow.

'There, Prior, ' said the Captain, 'are quills enough to supply all the monks of Jervaulx for the next hundred years, an they take not to writing chronicles.' "

Ivanhoe  Sir Walter Scott