Note 25 — Chapter V
Reading edition
Of course Tabitha Aykroyd was twenty years younger when Charlotte was a child. Thus the early references to the more active Ellen Dean and Bessie in the main imply Tabby in the eighteen-twenties; those to her as the sedate and glum Mrs. Dean and Hannah, as Tabby in the eighteen-forties. We see Tabby quite in the caricature of Joseph in Charlotte's half-humorous references to her in the diary-like descriptions of the Brontë kitchen fireside life of her childhood in 1829, etc.—of which the rainy day incident in the childhood of little Catherine and Jane is so reminiscent—quoted by Mrs. Gaskell in the Brontë Life:—
"June the 21st, 1829.
"One night, about the time when the cold sleet of November [is] succeeded by the snowstorms and the high, piercing night winds of winter, we were all sitting round the warm, blazing kitchen fire, having just concluded a quarrel with Tabby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle, from which she came off victorious, no candle having been produced. A long pause succeeded, which was at last broken by Branwell saying, in a lazy manner, 'I don't know what to do.' This was echoed by Emily and Anne.
"Tabby: 'Wha ya may go t' bed.'
"Charlotte: 'Why are you so glum to-night, Tabby?'"
As time progressed Charlotte Brontë viewed more sentimentally the associations of her early childhood. Whenever Tabby was "Joseph" of Wuthering Heights Charlotte humorously caricatured her.