Professor John Sutherland came to the Brontës early in life, but not in what you might call the usual way. He may be the only person to have started his Brontë experience with The Professor – the book Charlotte referred to as her ``idiot child’’ and the one most people probably read last, if at all.
As Sutherland explained in his talk on April 21 to the Brussels Bronte Group, the novel struck a chord with him when he first read it as a pre-teen, particularly a scene early on before the protagonist, William Crimsworth, heads to Brussels. The volume included six illustrations by Edmund Dulac, and one was of this scene in Chapter II:
At a distance of five miles, a valley, opening between the low hills, held in its cups the great town of X----. A dense, permanent vapour brooded over this locality -- there lay Edward’s “Concern.”
I forced my eye to scrutinize this prospect, I forced my mind to dwell on it for a time, and when I found that it communicated no pleasurable emotion to my heart -- that it stirred in me none of the hopes a man ought to feel, when he sees laid before him the scene of his life’s career -- I said to myself, “William, you are a rebel against circumstances; you are a fool, and know not what you want; you have chosen trade …”
As Sutherland explained in his talk on April 21 to the Brussels Bronte Group, the novel struck a chord with him when he first read it as a pre-teen, particularly a scene early on before the protagonist, William Crimsworth, heads to Brussels. The volume included six illustrations by Edmund Dulac, and one was of this scene in Chapter II:
At a distance of five miles, a valley, opening between the low hills, held in its cups the great town of X----. A dense, permanent vapour brooded over this locality -- there lay Edward’s “Concern.”
I forced my eye to scrutinize this prospect, I forced my mind to dwell on it for a time, and when I found that it communicated no pleasurable emotion to my heart -- that it stirred in me none of the hopes a man ought to feel, when he sees laid before him the scene of his life’s career -- I said to myself, “William, you are a rebel against circumstances; you are a fool, and know not what you want; you have chosen trade …”
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| STEAM, TRADE, MACHINERY HAD LONG BANISHED FROM IT ALL ROMANCE AND SECLUSION Edmund Dulac illustration from J.M. Dent's 1922 edition of The Professor |
