It was always a great trouble to Miss Wheelwright, whose friendship, it will be remembered, she had made in Brussels, that Charlotte was monopolised by the Smiths on her rare visits to London, but she frequently came to call at Lower Phillimore Place.
TO MISS LÆTITIA WHEELWRIGHT
‘Haworth, Keighley, December 17th, 1849.
‘My dear Lætitia,—I have just time to save the post by writing a brief note. I reached home safely on Saturday afternoon, and, I am thankful to say, found papa quite well.
‘The evening after I left you passed better than I expected. Thanks to my substantial lunch and cheering cup of coffee, I was able to wait the eight o’clock dinner with complete resignation, and to endure its length quite courageously, nor was I too much exhausted to converse; and of this I was glad, for otherwise I know my kind host and hostess would have been much disappointed. There were only seven gentlemen at dinner besides Mr. Smith, but of these, five were critics—a formidable band, including the literary Rhadamanthi of the Times, the Athenæum, the Examiner, the Spectator, and the Atlas: men more dreaded in the world of letters than you can conceive. I did not know how much their presence and conversation had excited me till they were gone, and then reaction commenced. When I had retired for the night I wished to sleep; the effort to do so was vain—I could not close my eyes. Night passed, morning came, and I rose without having known a moment’s slumber. So utterly worn out was I when I got to Derby, that I was obliged to stay there all night.
‘The post is going. Give my affectionate love to your mamma, Emily, Fanny, and Sarah Anne. Remember me respectfully to your papa, and—Believe me, dear Lætitia, yours faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.’
Miss Wheelwright’s other sisters well remember certain episodes in connection with these London visits. They recall Charlotte’s anxiety and trepidation at the prospect of meeting Thackeray. They recollect her simple, dainty dress, her shy demeanour, her absolutely unspoiled character. They tell me it was in the Illustrated London News, about the time of the publication of Shirley, that they first learnt that Currer Bell and Charlotte Brontë were one. They would, however, have known that Shirley was by a Brussels pupil, they declared, from the absolute resemblance of Hortense Moore to one of their governesses—Mlle. Hausse.
At the end of 1849 Miss Brontë and Miss Martineau became acquainted. Charlotte’s admiration for her more strong-minded sister writer was at first profound.
TO JAMES TAYLOR
‘January 1st, 1850.
‘My dear Sir,—I am sorry there should have occurred an irregularity in the transmission of the papers; it has been owing to my absence from home. I trust the interruption has occasioned no inconvenience. Your last letter evinced such a sincere and discriminating admiration for Dr. Arnold, that perhaps you will not be wholly uninterested in hearing that during my late visit to Miss Martineau I saw much more of Fox How and its inmates, and daily admired, in the widow and children of one of the greatest and best men of his time, the possession of qualities the most estimable and endearing. Of my kind hostess herself I cannot speak in terms too high. Without being able to share all her opinions, philosophical, political, or religious, without adopting her theories, I yet find a worth and greatness in herself, and a consistency, benevolence, perseverance in her practice such as wins the sincerest esteem and affection. She is not a person to be judged by her writings alone, but rather by her own deeds and life—than which nothing can be more exemplary or nobler. She seems to me the benefactress of Ambleside, yet takes no sort of credit to herself for her active and indefatigable philanthropy. The government of her household is admirably administered; all she does is well done, from the writing of a history down to the quietest female occupation. No sort of carelessness or neglect is allowed under her rule, and yet she is not over strict nor too rigidly exacting; her servants and her poor neighbours love as well as respect her.
‘I must not, however, fall into the error of talking too much about her, merely because my own mind is just now deeply impressed with what I have seen of her intellectual power and moral worth. Faults she has, but to me they appear very trivial weighed in the balance against her excellencies.
‘With every good wish of the season,—I am, my dear sir, yours very sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
Meanwhile the excitement which Shirley was exciting in Currer Bell’s home circle was not confined to the curates. Here is a letter which Canon Heald (Cyril Hall) wrote at this time:—
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Birstall, near Leeds,
‘8th January 1850.‘Dear Ellen,—Fame says you are on a visit with the renowned Currer Bell, the “great unknown” of the present day. The celebrated Shirley has just found its way hither. And as one always reads a book with more interest when one has a correct insight into the writer’s designs, I write to ask a favour, which I ought not to be regarded presumptuous in saying that I think I have a species of claim to ask, on the ground of a sort of “poetical justice.” The interpretation of this enigma is, that the story goes that either I or my father, I do not exactly know which, are part of “Currer Bell’s” stock-in-trade, under the title of Mr. Hall, in that Mr. Hall is represented as black, bilious, and of dismal aspect, stooping a trifle, and indulging a little now and then in the indigenous dialect. This seems to sit very well on your humble servant—other traits do better for my good father than myself. However, though I had no idea that I should be made a means to amuse the public, Currer Bell is perfectly welcome to what she can make of so unpromising a subject. But I think I have a fair claim in return to be let into the secret of the company I have got into. Some of them are good enough to tell, and need no Œdipus to solve the riddle. I can tabulate, for instance, the Yorke family for the Taylors, Mr. Moore—Mr. Cartwright, and Mr. Helstone is clearly meant for Mr. Robertson, though the authoress has evidently got her idea of his character through an unfavourable medium, and does not understand the full value of one of the most admirable characters I ever knew or expect to know. May thinks she descries Cecilia Crowther and Miss Johnston (afterwards Mrs. Westerman) in two old maids.
‘Now pray get us a full light on all other names and localities that are adumbrated in this said Shirley. When some of the prominent characters will be recognised by every one who knows our quarters, there can be no harm in letting one know who may be intended by the rest. And, if necessary, I will bear Currer Bell harmless, and not let the world know that I have my intelligence from head-quarters. As I said before, I repeat now, that as I or mine are part of the stock-in-trade, I think I have an equitable claim to this intelligence, by way of my dividend. Mary and Harriet wish also to get at this information; and the latter at all events seems to have her own peculiar claim, as fame says she is “in the book” too. One had need “walk . . . warily in these dangerous days,” when, as Burns (is it not he?) says—
‘A chield’s among you taking notes,
And faith he’ll prent it.’—‘Yours sincerely,
‘W. M. Heald.
‘Mary and Harriet unite with me in the best wishes of the season to you and C--- B---. Pray give my best respects to Mr. Brontë also, who may have some slight remembrance of me as a child. I just remember him when at Hartshead.’ [444]
TO W. S. WILLIAMS
‘February 2nd, 1850.
‘My dear Sir,—I have despatched to-day a parcel containing The Caxtons, Macaulay’s Essays, Humboldt’s Letters, and such other of the books as I have read, packed with a picturesque irregularity well calculated to excite the envy and admiration of your skilful functionary in Cornhill. By-the-bye, he ought to be careful of the few pins stuck in here and there, as he might find them useful at a future day, in case of having more bonnets to pack for the East Indies. Whenever you send me a new supply of books, may I request that you will have the goodness to include one or two of Miss Austen’s. I am often asked whether I have read them, and I excite amazement by replying in the negative. I have read none except Pride and Prejudice. Miss Martineau mentioned Persuasion as the best.
‘Thank you for your account of the First Performance. It was cheering and pleasant to read it, for in your animated description I seemed to realise the scene; your criticism also enables me to form some idea of the play. Lewes is a strange being. I always regret that I did not see him when in London. He seems to me clever, sharp, and coarse; I used to think him sagacious, but I believe now he is no more than shrewd, for I have observed once or twice that he brings forward as grand discoveries of his own, information he has casually received from others—true sagacity disdains little tricks of this sort. But though Lewes has many smart and some deserving points about him, he has nothing truly great; and nothing truly great, I should think, will he ever produce. Yet he merits just such successes as the one you describe—triumphs public, brief, and noisy. Notoriety suits Lewes. Fame—were it possible that he could achieve her—would be a thing uncongenial to him: he could not wait for the solemn blast of her trumpet, sounding long, and slowly waxing louder.
‘I always like your way of mentioning Mr. Smith, because my own opinion of him concurs with yours; and it is as pleasant to have a favourable impression of character confirmed, as it is painful to see it dispelled. I am sure he possesses a fine nature, and I trust the selfishness of the world and the hard habits of business, though they may and must modify him disposition, will never quite spoil it.
‘Can you give me any information respecting Sheridan Knowles? A few lines received from him lately, and a present of his George Lovel, induce me to ask the question. Of course I am aware that he is a dramatic writer of eminence, but do you know anything about him as a man?
‘I believe both Shirley and Jane Eyre are being a good deal read in the North just now; but I only hear fitful rumours from time to time. I ask nothing, and my life of anchorite seclusion shuts out all bearers of tidings. One or two curiosity-hunter have made their way to Haworth Parsonage, but our rude hill and rugged neighbourhood will, I doubt not, form a sufficient barrier to the frequent repetition of such visits.—Believe me, yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
The most permanent friend among the curiosity-hunters, was Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, [446] who came a month later to Haworth.
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘March 1st, 1850.
‘Dear Ellen,—I scribble you a line in haste to tell you of my proceedings. Various folks are beginning to come boring to Haworth, on the wise errand of seeing the scenery described in Jane Eyre and Shirley; amongst others, Sir J. K. Shuttleworth and Lady S. have persisted in coming; they were here on Friday. The baronet looks in vigorous health; he scarcely appears more than thirty-five, but he says he is forty-four. Lady Shuttleworth is rather handsome, and still young. They were both quite unpretending. When here they again urged me to visit them. Papa took their side at once—would not hear of my refusing. I must go—this left me without plea or defence. I consented to go for three days. They wanted me to return with them in the carriage, but I pleaded off till to-morrow. I wish it was well over.
‘If all be well I shall be able to write more about them when I come back. Sir J. is very courtly—fine-looking; I wish he may be as sincere as he is polished.—In haste, yours faithfully,
‘C. B.’
TO W. S. WILLIAMS
‘March 16th, 1850.
‘My dear Sir,—I found your letter with several others awaiting me on my return home from a brief stay in Lancashire. The mourning border alarmed me much. I feared that dread visitant, before whose coming every household trembles, had invaded your hearth and taken from you perhaps a child, perhaps something dearer still. The loss you have actually sustained is painful, but so much less painful than what I had anticipated, that to read your letter was to be greatly relieved. Still, I know what Mrs. Williams will feel. We can have but one father, but one mother, and when either is gone, we have lost what can never be replaced. Offer her, under this affliction, my sincere sympathy. I can well imagine the cloud these sad tidings would cast over your young cheerful family. Poor little Dick’s exclamation and burst of grief are most naïve and natural; he felt the sorrow of a child—a keen, but, happily, a transient pang. Time will, I trust, ere long restore your own and your wife’s serenity and your children’s cheerfulness.
‘I mentioned, I think, that we had one or two visitors at Haworth lately; amongst them were Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth and his lady. Before departing they exacted a promise that I would visit them at Gawthorpe Hall, their residence on the borders of East Lancashire. I went reluctantly, for it is always a difficult and painful thing to me to meet the advances of people whose kindness I am in no position to repay. Sir James is a man of polished manners, with clear intellect and highly cultivated mind. On the whole, I got on very well with him.
‘His health is just now somewhat broken by his severe official labours; and the quiet drives to old ruins and old halls situate amongst older hills and woods, the dialogues (perhaps I should rather say monologues, for I listened far more than I talked) by the fireside in his antique oak-panelled drawing-room, while they suited him, did not too much oppress and exhaust me. The house, too, is very much to my taste, near three centuries old, grey, stately, and picturesque. On the whole, now that the visit is over, I do not regret having paid it. The worst of it is that there is now some menace hanging over my head of an invitation to go to them in London during the season—this, which would doubtless be a great enjoyment to some people, is a perfect terror to me. I should highly prize the advantages to be gained in an extended range of observation, but I tremble at the thought of the price I must necessarily pay in mental distress and physical wear and tear. But you shall have no more of my confessions—to you they will appear folly.—Yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘March 19th, 1850.
‘Dear Ellen,—I have got home again, and now that the visit is over, I am, as usual, glad I have been; not that I could have endured to prolong it: a few days at once, in an utterly strange place, amongst utterly strange faces, is quite enough for me.
‘When the train stopped at Burnley, I found Sir James waiting for me. A drive of about three miles brought us to the gates of Gawthorpe, and after passing up a somewhat desolate avenue, there towered the hall—grey, antique, castellated, and stately—before me. It is 250 years old, and, within as without, is a model of old English architecture. The arms and the strange crest of the Shuttleworths are carved on the oak pannelling of each room. They are not a parvenue family, but date from the days of Richard III. This part of Lancashire seems rather remarkable for its houses of ancient race. The Townleys, who live near, go back to the Conquest.
‘The people, however, were of still more interest to me than the house. Lady Shuttleworth is a little woman, thirty-two years old, with a pretty, smooth, lively face. Of pretension to aristocratic airs she may be entirely acquitted; of frankness, good-humour, and activity she has enough; truth obliges me to add, that, as it seems to me, grace, dignity, fine feeling were not in the inventory of her qualities. These last are precisely what her husband possesses. In manner he can be gracious and dignified; his tastes and feelings are capable of elevation; frank he is not, but, on the contrary, politic; he calls himself a man of the world and knows the world’s ways; courtly and affable in some points of view, he is strict and rigorous in others. In him high mental cultivation is combined with an extended range of observation, and thoroughly practical views and habits. His nerves are naturally acutely sensitive, and the present very critical state of his health has exaggerated sensitiveness into irritability. His wife is of a temperament precisely suited to nurse him and wait on him; if her sensations were more delicate and acute she would not do half so well. They get on perfectly together. The children—there are four of them—are all fine children in their way. They have a young German lady as governess—a quiet, well-instructed, interesting girl, whom I took to at once, and, in my heart, liked better than anything else in the house. She also instinctively took to me. She is very well treated for a governess, but wore the usual pale, despondent look of her class. She told me she was home-sick, and she looked so.
‘I have received the parcel containing the cushion and all the etcetera, for which I thank you very much. I suppose I must begin with the group of flowers; I don’t know how I shall manage it, but I shall try. I have a good number of letters to answer—from Mr. Smith, from Mr. Williams, from Thornton Hunt, Lætitia Wheelwright, Harriet Dyson—and so I must bid you good-bye for the present. Write to me soon. The brief absence from home, though in some respects trying and painful in itself, has, I think, given me a little better tone of spirit. All through this month of February I have had a crushing time of it. I could not escape from or rise above certain most mournful recollections—the last few days, the sufferings, the remembered words, most sorrowful to me, of those who, Faith assures me, are now happy. At evening and bed-time such thoughts would haunt me, bringing a weary heartache. Good-bye, dear Nell.—Yours faithfully,
‘C. B.’
‘May 21st, 1850.
‘Dear Ellen,—My visit is again postponed. Sir James Shuttleworth, I am sorry to say, is most seriously ill. Two physicians are in attendance twice a day, and company and conversation, even with his own relatives, are prohibited as too exciting. Notwithstanding this, he has written two notes to me himself, claiming a promise that I will wait till he is better, and not allow any one else “to introduce me” as he says, “into the Oceanic life of London.” Sincerely sorry as I was for him, I could not help smiling at this sentence. But I shall willingly promise. I know something of him, and like part, at least, of what I do know. I do not feel in the least tempted to change him for another. His sufferings are very great. I trust and hope God will be pleased to spare his mind. I have just got a note informing me that he is something better; but, of course, he will vary. Lady Shuttleworth is much, much to be pitied too; his nights, it seems, are most distressing.—Good-bye, dear Nell. Write soon to
‘C. B.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘76 Gloucester Terrace,
‘Hyde Park Gardens, June 3rd, 1850.‘Dear Ellen,—I came to London last Thursday. I am staying at Mrs. Smith’s, who has changed her residence, as the address will show. A good deal of writing backwards and forwards, persuasion, etc., took place before this step was resolved on; but at last I explained to Sir James that I had some little matters of business to transact, and that I should stay quietly at my publisher’s. He has called twice, and Lady Shuttleworth once; each of them alone. He is in a fearfully nervous state. To my great horror he talks of my going with them to Hampton Court, Windsor, etc. God knows how I shall get on. I perfectly dread it.
‘Here I feel very comfortable. Mrs. Smith treats me with a serene, equable kindness which just suits me. Her son is, as before, genial and kindly. I have seen very few persons, and am not likely to see many, as the agreement was that I was to be very quiet. We have been to the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, to the Opera, and the Zoological Gardens. The weather is splendid. I shall not stay longer than a fortnight in London. The feverishness and exhaustion beset me somewhat, but not quite so badly as before, as indeed I have not yet been so much tried. I hope you will write soon and tell me how you are getting on. Give my regards to all.—Yours faithfully,
‘C. B.’
TO REV. P. BRONTË
‘76 Gloucester Terrace,
‘Hyde Park Gardens, June 4th, 1850.‘Dear Papa,—I was very glad to get your letter this morning, and still more glad to learn that your health continues in some degree to improve. I fear you will feel the present weather somewhat debilitating, at least if it is as warm in Yorkshire as in London. I cannot help grudging these fine days on account of the roofing of the house. It is a great pity the workmen were not prepared to begin a week ago.
‘Since I wrote I have been to the Opera; to the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, where there were some fine paintings, especially a large one by Landseer of the Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo, and a grand, wonderful picture of Martin’s from Campbell’s poem of the “Last Man,” showing the red sun fading out of the sky, and all the soil of the foreground made up of bones and skulls. The secretary of the Zoological Society also sent me an honorary ticket of admission to their gardens, which I wish you could see. There are animals from all parts of the world inclosed in great cages in the open air amongst trees and shrubs—lions, tigers, leopards, elephants, numberless monkies, camels, five or six cameleopards, a young hippopotamus with an Egyptian for its keeper; birds of all kinds—eagles, ostriches, a pair of great condors from the Andes, strange ducks and water-fowl which seem very happy and comfortable, and build their nests amongst the reeds and sedges of the lakes where they are kept. Some of the American birds make inexpressible noises.
‘There are also all sorts of living snakes and lizards in cages, some great Ceylon toads not much smaller than Flossy, some large foreign rats nearly as large and fierce as little bull-dogs. The most ferocious and deadly-looking things in the place were these rats, a laughing hyena (which every now and then uttered a hideous peal of laughter such as a score of maniacs might produce) and a cobra di capello snake. I think this snake was the worst of all: it had the eyes and face of a fiend, and darted out its barbed tongue sharply and incessantly.
‘I am glad to hear that Tabby and Martha are pretty well. Remember me to them, and—Believe me, dear papa, your affectionate daughter,
‘C. Brontë.
‘I hope you don’t care for the notice in Sharpe’s Magazine; it does not disturb me in the least. Mr. Smith says it is of no consequence whatever in a literary sense. Sharpe, the proprietor, was an apprentice of Mr. Smith’s father.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘76 Gloucester Terrace,
‘Hyde Park Gardens, June 21st, 1850.‘Dear Ellen,—I am leaving London, if all be well, on Tuesday, and shall be very glad to come to you for a few days, if that arrangement still remains convenient to you. I intend to start at nine o’clock a.m. by the express train, which arrives in Leeds thirty-five minutes past two. I should then be at Batley about four in the afternoon. Would that suit?
‘My London visit has much surpassed my expectations this time; I have suffered less and enjoyed more than before. Rather a trying termination yet remains to me. Mrs. Smith’s youngest son is at school in Scotland, and George, her eldest, is going to fetch him home for the vacation. The other evening he announced his intention of taking one of his sisters with him, and proposed that Miss Brontë should go down to Edinburgh and join them there, and see that city and its suburbs. I concluded he was joking, laughed and declined; however, it seems he was in earnest. The thing appearing to me perfectly out of the question, I still refused. Mrs. Smith did not favour it; you may easily fancy how she helped me to sustain my opposition, but her worthy son only waxed more determined. His mother is master of the house, but he is master of his mother. This morning she came and entreated me to go. “George wished it so much”; he had begged her to use her influence, etc., etc. Now I believe that George and I understand each other very well, and respect each other very sincerely. We both know the wide breach time has made between us; we do not embarrass each other, or very rarely; my six or eight years of seniority, to say nothing of lack of all pretension to beauty, etc., are a perfect safeguard. I should not in the least fear to go with him to China. I like to see him pleased, I greatly dislike to ruffle and disappoint him, so he shall have his mind; and if all be well, I mean to join him in Edinburgh after I shall have spent a few days with you. With his buoyant animal spirits and youthful vigour he will make severe demands on my muscles and nerves, but I daresay I shall get through somehow, and then perhaps come back to rest a few days with you before I go home. With kind regards to all at Brookroyd, your guests included,—I am, dear Ellen, yours faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.
‘Write by return of post.’
TO MISS LÆTITIA WHEELWRIGHT
‘Haworth, July 30th, 1850.
‘My dear Lætitia,—I promised to write to you when I should have returned home. Returned home I am, but you may conceive that many, many matters solicit attention and demand arrangement in a house which has lately been turned topsy-turvy in the operation of unroofing. Drawers and cupboards must wait a moment, however, while I fulfil my promise, though it is imperatively necessary that this fulfilment should be achieved with brevity.
‘My stay in Scotland was short, and what I saw was chiefly comprised in Edinburgh and the neighbourhood, in Abbotsford and Melrose, for I was obliged to relinquish my first intention of going from Glasgow to Oban and thence through a portion of the Highlands. But though the time was brief, and the view of objects limited, I found such a charm of situation, association, and circumstances that I think the enjoyment experienced in that little space equalled in degree and excelled in kind all which London yielded during a month’s sojourn. Edinburgh compared to London is like a vivid page of history compared to a huge dull treatise on political economy; and as to Melrose and Abbotsford, the very names possess music and magic.
‘I am thankful to say that on my return home I found papa pretty well. Full often had I thought of him when I was far away; and deeply sad as it is on many accounts to come back to this old house, yet I was glad to be with him once more.
‘You were proposing, I remember, to go into the country; I trust you are there now and enjoying this fine day in some scene where the air will not be tainted, nor the sunshine dimmed, by London smoke. If your papa, mamma, or any of your sisters are within reach, give them my kindest remembrances—if not, save such remembrances till you see them.—Believe me, my dear Lætitia, yours hurriedly but faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO REV. P. BRONTË
‘Ambleside, August 15th, 1850.
‘Dear Papa,—I think I shall not come home till Thursday. If all be well I shall leave here on Monday and spend a day or two with Ellen Nussey. I have enjoyed my visit exceedingly. Sir J. K. Shuttleworth has called several times and taken me out in his carriage. He seems very truly friendly; but, I am sorry to say, he looks pale and very much wasted. I greatly fear he will not live very long unless some change for the better soon takes place. Lady S. is ill too, and cannot go out. I have seen a good deal of Dr. Arnold’s family, and like them much. As to Miss Martineau, I admire her and wonder at her more than I can say. Her powers of labour, of exercise, and social cheerfulness are beyond my comprehension. In spite of the unceasing activity of her colossal intellect she enjoys robust health. She is a taller, larger, and more strongly made woman than I had imagined from that first interview with her. She is very kind to me, though she must think I am a very insignificant person compared to herself. She has just been into the room to show me a chapter of her history which she is now writing, relating to the Duke of Wellington’s character and his proceedings in the Peninsula. She wanted an opinion on it, and I was happy to be able to give a very approving one. She seems to understand and do him justice.
‘You must not direct any more letters here as they will not reach me after to-day. Hoping, dear papa, that you are well, and with kind regards to Tabby and Martha,—I am, your affectionate daughter,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO W. S. WILLIAMS
‘October 2nd, 1850.
‘My dear Sir,—I have to thank you for the care and kindness with which you have assisted me throughout in correcting these Remains.
‘Whether, when they are published, they will appear to others as they do to me, I cannot tell. I hope not. And indeed I suppose what to me is bitter pain will only be soft pathos to the general public.
‘Miss Martineau has several times lately asked me to go and see her; and though this is a dreary season for travelling northward, I think if papa continues pretty well I shall go in a week or two. I feel to my deep sorrow, to my humiliation, that it is not in my power to bear the canker of constant solitude. I had calculated that when shut out from every enjoyment, from every stimulus but what could be derived from intellectual exertion, my mind would rouse itself perforce. It is not so. Even intellect, even imagination, will not dispense with the ray of domestic cheerfulness, with the gentle spur of family discussion. Late in the evenings, and all through the nights, I fall into a condition of mind which turns entirely to the past—to memory; and memory is both sad and relentless. This will never do, and will produce no good. I tell you this that you may check false anticipations. You cannot help me, and must not trouble yourself in any shape to sympathise with me. It is my cup, and I must drink it, as others drink theirs.—Yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
Among Miss Brontë’s papers I find the following letter to Miss Martineau, written with a not unnatural resentment after the publication of a severe critique of Shirley.
TO MISS HARRIET MARTINEAU.
‘My dear Miss Martineau,—I think I best show my sense of the tone and feeling of your last, by immediate compliance with the wish you express that I should send your letter. I inclose it, and have marked with red ink the passage which struck me dumb. All the rest is fair, right, worthy of you, but I protest against this passage; and were I brought up before the bar of all the critics in England, to such a charge I should respond, “Not guilty.”
‘I know what love is as I understand it; and if man or woman should be ashamed of feeling such love, then is there nothing right, noble, faithful, truthful, unselfish in this earth, as I comprehend rectitude, nobleness, fidelity, truth, and disinterestedness.—Yours sincerely,
‘C. B.
‘To differ from you gives me keen pain.’
TO JAMES TAYLOR, CORNHILL
‘November 6th, 1850.
‘My dear Sir,—Mrs. Arnold seemed an amiable, and must once have been a very pretty, woman; her daughter I liked much. There was present also a son of Chevalier Bunsen, with his wife, or rather bride. I had not then read Dr. Arnold’s Life—otherwise, the visit would have interested me even more than it actually did.
‘Mr. Williams told me (if I mistake not) that you had recently visited the Lake Country. I trust you enjoyed your excursion, and that our English Lakes did not suffer too much by comparison in your memory with the Scottish Lochs.—I am, my dear sir, yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Ambleside, December 21st, 1850.
‘Dear Ellen,—I have managed to get off going to Sir J. K. Shuttleworth’s by a promise to come some other time. I thought I really should like to spend two or three days with you before going home; therefore, if it is not inconvenient for you, I will come on Monday and stay till Thursday. I shall be at Bradford (D.V.) at ten minutes past two, Monday afternoon, and can take a cab at the station forward to Birstall. I have truly enjoyed my visit. I have seen a good many people, and all have been so marvellously kind; not the least so the family of Dr. Arnold. Miss Martineau I relish inexpressibly. Sir James has been almost every day to take me a drive. I begin to admit in my own mind that he is sincerely benignant to me. I grieve to say he looks to me as if wasting away. Lady Shuttleworth is ill. She cannot go out, and I have not seen her. Till we meet, good-bye.
‘C. Brontë.’
It was during this visit to Ambleside that Charlotte Brontë and Matthew Arnold met.
‘At seven,’ writes Mr. Arnold from Fox How (December 21, 1850), ‘came Miss Martineau and Miss Brontë (Jane Eyre); talked to Miss Martineau (who blasphemes frightfully) about the prospects of the Church of England, and, wretched man that I am, promised to go and see her cow-keeping miracles [457a] to-morrow—I, who hardly know a cow from a sheep. I talked to Miss Brontë (past thirty and plain, with expressive grey eyes, though) of her curates, of French novels, and her education in a school at Brussels, and sent the lions roaring to their dens at half-past nine, and came to talk to you.’ [457b]
By the light of this ‘impression,’ it is not a little interesting to see what Miss Brontë, ‘past thirty and plain,’ thought of Mr. Matthew Arnold!
TO JAMES TAYLOR, CORNHILL,
‘January 15th, 1851.
‘My dear Sir,—I fancy the imperfect way in which my last note was expressed must have led you into an error, and that you must have applied to Mrs. Arnold the remarks I intended for Miss Martineau. I remember whilst writing about “my hostess” I was sensible to some obscurity in the term; permit me now to explain that it referred to Miss Martineau.
‘Mrs. Arnold is, indeed, as I judge from my own observations no less than from the unanimous testimony of all who really know her, a good and amiable woman, but the intellectual is not her forte, and she has no pretensions to power or completeness of character. The same remark, I think, applies to her daughters. You admire in them the kindliest feeling towards each other and their fellow-creatures, and they offer in their home circle a beautiful example of family unity, and of that refinement which is sure to spring thence; but when the conversation turns on literature or any subject that offers a test for the intellect, you usually felt that their opinions were rather imitative than original, rather sentimental than sound. Those who have only seen Mrs. Arnold once will necessarily, I think, judge of her unfavourably; her manner on introduction disappointed me sensibly, as lacking that genuineness and simplicity one seemed to have a right to expect in the chosen life-companion of Dr. Arnold. On my remarking as much to Mrs. Gaskell and Sir J. K. Shuttleworth, I was told for my consolation it was a “conventional manner,” but that it vanished on closer acquaintance; fortunately this last assurance proved true. It is observable that Matthew Arnold, the eldest son, and the author of the volume of poems to which you allude, inherits his mother’s defect. Striking and prepossessing in appearance, his manner displeases from its seeming foppery. I own it caused me at first to regard him with regretful surprise; the shade of Dr. Arnold seemed to me to frown on his young representative. I was told, however, that “Mr. Arnold improved upon acquaintance.” So it was: ere long a real modesty appeared under his assumed conceit, and some genuine intellectual aspirations, as well as high educational acquirements, displaced superficial affectations. I was given to understand that his theological opinions were very vague and unsettled, and indeed he betrayed as much in the course of conversation. Most unfortunate for him, doubtless, has been the untimely loss of his father.
‘My visit to Westmoreland has certainly done me good. Physically, I was not ill before I went there, but my mind had undergone some painful laceration. In the course of looking over my sister’s papers, mementos, and memoranda, that would have been nothing to others, conveyed for me so keen a sting. Near at hand there was no means of lightening or effacing the sad impression by refreshing social intercourse; from my father, of course, my sole care was to conceal it—age demanding the same forbearance as infancy in the communication of grief. Continuous solitude grew more than I could bear, and, to speak truth, I was glad of a change. You will say that we ought to have power in ourselves either to bear circumstances or to bend them. True, we should do our best to this end, but sometimes our best is unavailing. However, I am better now, and most thankful for the respite.
‘The interest you so kindly express in my sister’s works touches me home. Thank you for it, especially as I do not believe you would speak otherwise than sincerely. The only notices that I have seen of the new edition of Wuthering Heights were those in the Examiner, the Leader, and the Athenæum. That in the Athenæum somehow gave me pleasure: it is quiet but respectful—so I thought, at least.
‘You asked whether Miss Martineau made me a convert to mesmerism? Scarcely; yet I heard miracles of its efficacy and could hardly discredit the whole of what was told me. I even underwent a personal experiment; and though the result was not absolutely clear, it was inferred that in time I should prove an excellent subject.
‘The question of mesmerism will be discussed with little reserve, I believe, in a forthcoming work of Miss Martineau’s, and I have some painful anticipations of the manner in which other subjects, offering less legitimate ground for speculation, will be handled.
‘You mention the Leader; what do you think of it? I have been asked to contribute; but though I respect the spirit of fairness and courtesy in which it is on the whole conducted, its principles on some points are such that I have hitherto shrunk from the thought of seeing my name in its columns.
‘Thanking you for your good wishes,—I am, my dear sir, yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS LÆTITIA WHEELWRIGHT
‘Haworth, January 12th, 1851.
‘Dear Lætitia,—A spare moment must and shall be made for you, no matter how many letters I have to write (and just now there is an influx). In reply to your kind inquiries, I have to say that my stay in London and excursion to Scotland did me good—much good at the time; but my health was again somewhat sharply tried at the close of autumn, and I lost in some days of indisposition the additional flesh and strength I had previously gained. This resulted from the painful task of looking over letters and papers belonging to my sisters. Many little mementos and memoranda conspired to make an impression inexpressibly sad, which solitude deepened and fostered till I grew ill. A brief trip to Westmoreland has, however, I am thankful to say, revived me again, and the circumstance of papa being just now in good health and spirits gives me many causes for gratitude. When we have but one precious thing left we think much of it.
‘I have been staying a short time with Miss Martineau. As you may imagine, the visit proved one of no common interest. She is certainly a woman of wonderful endowments, both intellectual and physical, and though I share few of her opinions, and regard her as fallible on certain points of judgment, I must still accord her my sincerest esteem. The manner in which she combines the highest mental culture with the nicest discharge of feminine duties filled me with admiration, while her affectionate kindness earned my gratitude.
‘Your description of the magician Paxton’s crystal palace is quite graphic. Whether I shall see it or not I don’t know. London will be so dreadfully crowded and busy this season, I feel a dread of going there.
‘Compelled to break off, I have only time to offer my kindest remembrances to your whole circle, and my love to yourself.—Yours ever,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO REV. P. BRONTË
‘112 Gloucester Terrace, Hyde Park,
‘London, June 17th, 1851.‘Dear Papa,—I write a line in haste to tell you that I find they will not let me leave London till next Tuesday; and as I have promised to spend a day or two with Mrs. Gaskell on my way home, it will probably be Friday or Saturday in next week before I return to Haworth. Martha will thus have a few days more time, and must not hurry or overwork herself. Yesterday I saw Cardinal Wiseman and heard him speak. It was at a meeting for the Roman Catholic Society of St. Vincent de Paul; the Cardinal presided. He is a big portly man something of the shape of Mr. Morgan; he has not merely a double but a treble and quadruple chin; he has a very large mouth with oily lips, and looks as if he would relish a good dinner with a bottle of wine after it. He came swimming into the room smiling, simpering, and bowing like a fat old lady, and sat down very demure in his chair and looked the picture of a sleek hypocrite. He was dressed in black like a bishop or dean in plain clothes, but wore scarlet gloves and a brilliant scarlet waistcoat. A bevy of inferior priests surrounded him, many of them very dark-looking and sinister men. The Cardinal spoke in a smooth whining manner, just like a canting Methodist preacher. The audience seemed to look up to him as to a god. A spirit of the hottest zeal pervaded the whole meeting. I was told afterwards that except myself and the person who accompanied me there was not a single Protestant present. All the speeches turned on the necessity of straining every nerve to make converts to popery. It is in such a scene that one feels what the Catholics are doing. Most persevering and enthusiastic are they in their work! Let Protestants look to it. It cheered me much to hear that you continue pretty well. Take every care of yourself. Remember me kindly to Tabby and Martha, also to Mr. Nicholls, and—Believe me, dear papa, your affectionate daughter,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘June 19th, 1851.
‘Dear Ellen,—I shall have to stay in London a few days longer than I intended. Sir J. K. Shuttleworth has found out that I am here. I have some trouble in warding off his wish that I should go directly to his house and take up my quarters there, but Mrs. Smith helped me, and I got off with promising to spend a day. I am engaged to spend a day or two with Mrs. Gaskell on my way home, and could not put her off, as she is going away for a portion of the summer. Lady Shuttleworth looks very delicate. Papa is now very desirous I should come home; and when I have as quickly as possible paid my debts of engagements, home I must go. Next Tuesday I go to Manchester for two days.
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘112 Gloucester Terrace,
‘Hyde Park, June 24th, 1851.‘Dear Ellen,—I cannot now leave London till Friday. To-morrow is Mr. Smith’s only holiday. Mr. Taylor’s departure leaves him loaded with work. More than once since I came he has been kept in the city till three in the morning. He wants to take us all to Richmond, and I promised last week I would stay and go with him, his mother, and sisters. I go to Mrs. Gaskell’s on Friday.—Believe me, yours faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO REV. P. BRONTË, Haworth, Yorks
‘112 Gloucester Terrace,
‘June 26th, 1851.‘Dear Papa,—I have not yet been able to get away from London, but if all be well I shall go to-morrow, stay two days with Mrs. Gaskell at Manchester, and return home on Monday 30th without fail. During this last week or ten days I have seen many things, some of them very interesting, and have also been in much better health than I was during the first fortnight of my stay in London. Sir James and Lady Shuttleworth have really been very kind, and most scrupulously attentive. They desire their regards to you, and send all manner of civil messages. The Marquis of Westminster and the Earl of Ellesmere each sent me an order to see their private collection of pictures, which I enjoyed very much. Mr. Rogers, the patriarch-poet, now eighty-seven years old, invited me to breakfast with him. His breakfasts, you must understand, are celebrated throughout Europe for their peculiar refinement and taste. He never admits at that meal more than four persons to his table: himself and three guests. The morning I was there I met Lord Glenelg and Mrs. Davenport, a relation of Lady Shuttleworth’s, and a very beautiful and fashionable woman. The visit was very interesting; I was glad that I had paid it after it was over. An attention that pleased and surprised me more I think than any other was the circumstance of Sir David Brewster, who is one of the first scientific men of his day, coming to take me over the Crystal Palace and pointing out and explaining the most remarkable curiosities. You will know, dear papa, that I do not mention those things to boast of them, but merely because I think they will give you pleasure. Nobody, I find, thinks the worse of me for avoiding publicity and declining to go to large parties, and everybody seems truly courteous and respectful, a mode of behaviour which makes me grateful, as it ought to do. Good-bye till Monday. Give my best regards to Mr. Nicholls, Tabby, and Martha, and—Believe me your affectionate daughter,
‘C. Brontë.’
Without the kindly assistance of Mr. Arthur Bell Nicholls, this book could not have been written, and I might therefore be supposed to guide my pen with appalling discretion in treating of the married life of Charlotte Brontë. There are, however, no painful secrets to reveal, no skeletons to lay bare. Mr. Nicholls’s story is a very simple one; and that it is entirely creditable to him, there is abundant evidence. Amid the full discussion to which the lives of the Brontës have necessarily been subjected through their ever-continuous fame, it was perhaps inevitable that a contrary opinion should gain ground. Many of Mr. Nicholls’s relatives in his own country have frequently sighed over the perverted statements which have obtained currency. ‘It is cruel that your uncle Arthur, the best of men, as we know, should be thus treated,’ was the comment of Mr. Nicholls’s brother to his daughter after reading an unfriendly article concerning Charlotte’s husband. Yet it was not unnatural that such an estimate should get abroad; and I may frankly admit that until I met Mr. Nicholls I believed that Charlotte Brontë’s marriage had been an unhappy one—an opinion gathered partly from Mrs. Gaskell, partly from current tradition in Yorkshire. Mrs. Gaskell, in fact, did not like Mr. Nicholls, and there were those with whom she came in contact while writing Miss Brontë’s Life who were eager to fan that feeling in the usually kindly biographer. Mr. Nicholls himself did not work in the direction of conciliation. He was, as we shall see, a Scotchman, and Scottish taciturnity brought to bear upon the genial and jovial Yorkshire folk did not make for friendliness. Further, he would not let Mrs. Gaskell ‘edit’ and change The Professor, and here also he did wisely and well. He hated publicity, and above all things viewed the attempt to pierce the veil of his married life with almost morbid detestation. Who shall say that he was not right, and that his retirement for more than forty years from the whole region of controversy has not abundantly justified itself? One at least of Miss Brontë’s friends has been known in our day to complain bitterly of all the trouble to which she has been subjected by the ill-considered zeal of Brontë enthusiasts. Mr. Nicholls has escaped all this by a judicious silence. Now that forty years and more have passed since his wife’s death, it cannot be inopportune to tell the public all that they can fairly ask to know.
Mr. Nicholls was born in Co. Antrim in 1817, but of Scottish parents on both sides. He was left at the age of seven to the charge of an uncle—the Rev. Alan Bell—who was headmaster of the Royal School at Banagher, in King’s Co. Mr. Nicholls afterwards entered Trinity College, Dublin, and it was thence that he went to Haworth, his first curacy. He succeeded a fellow countryman, Mr. Peter Augustus Smith, in 1844. The first impression we have of the new curate in Charlotte’s letters is scarcely more favourable than that of his predecessors.
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘October 9th, 1844.
‘Dear Ellen,—We are getting on here the same as usual, only that Branwell has been more than ordinarily troublesome and annoying of late; he leads papa a wretched life. Mr. Nicholls is returned just the same. I cannot for my life see those interesting germs of goodness in him you discovered; his narrowness of mind always strikes me chiefly. I fear he is indebted to your imagination for his hidden treasure.—Yours,
‘C. B.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘July 10th, 1846.
‘Dear Ellen,—Who gravely asked you whether Miss Brontë was not going to be married to her papa’s curate? I scarcely need say that never was rumour more unfounded. A cold faraway sort of civility are the only terms on which I have ever been with Mr. Nicholls. I could by no means think of mentioning such a rumour to him even as a joke. It would make me the laughing-stock of himself and his fellow curates for half a year to come. They regard me as an old maid, and I regard them, one and all, as highly uninteresting, narrow, and unattractive specimens of the coarser sex.
‘Write to me again soon, whether you have anything particular to say or not. Give my sincere love to your mother and sisters.
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘November 17th, 1846.
‘Dear Ellen,—I will just write a brief despatch to say that I received yours and that I was very glad to get it. I do not know when you have been so long without writing to me before. I had begun to imagine you were gone to your brother Joshua’s.
‘Papa continues to do very well. He read prayers twice in the church last Sunday. Next Sunday he will have to take the whole duty of the three services himself, as Mr. Nicholls is in Ireland. Remember me to your mother and sisters. Write as soon as you possibly can after you get to Oundle. Good luck go with you.
‘C. Brontë.’
That Scotch reticence held sway, and told against Mr. Nicholls for many a day to come.
‘October 7th, 1847.
‘Dear Ellen,—I have been expecting you to write to me; but as you don’t do it, and as, moreover, you may possibly think it is my turn, and not yours, though on that point I am far from clear, I shall just send you one of my scrubby notes for the express purpose of eliciting a reply. Anne was very much pleased with your letter; I presume she has answered it before now. I would fain hope that her health is a little stronger than it was, and her spirits a little better, but she leads much too sedentary a life, and is continually sitting stooping either over a book or over her desk. It is with difficulty we can prevail upon her to take a walk or induce her to converse. I look forward to next summer with the confident intention that she shall, if possible, make at least a brief sojourn at the sea-side.
‘I am sorry I inoculated you with fears about the east wind; I did not feel the last blast so severely as I have often done. My sympathies were much awakened by the touching anecdote. Did you salute your boy-messenger with a box on the ear the next time he came across you? I think I should have been strongly tempted to have done as much. Mr. Nicholls is not yet returned. I am sorry to say that many of the parishioners express a desire that he should not trouble himself to recross the Channel. This is not the feeling that ought to exist between shepherd and flock. It is not such as is prevalent at Birstall. It is not such as poor Mr. Weightman excited.
‘Give my best love to all of them, and—Believe me, yours faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.’
The next glimpse is more kindly.
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘January 28th, 1850.
‘Dear Ellen,—I cannot but be concerned to hear of your mother’s illness; write again soon, if it be but a line, to tell me how she gets on. This shadow will, I trust and believe, be but a passing one, but it is a foretaste and warning of what must come one day. Let it prepare your mind, dear Ellen, for that great trial which, if you live, it must in the course of a few years be your lot to undergo. That cutting asunder of the ties of nature is the pain we most dread and which we are most certain to experience. Lewes’s letter made me laugh; I cannot respect him more for it. Sir J. K. Shuttleworth’s letter did not make me laugh; he has written again since. I have received to-day a note from Miss Alexander, daughter, she says, of Dr. Alexander. Do you know anything of her? Mary Taylor seems in good health and spirits, and in the way of doing well. I shall feel anxious to hear again soon.
‘C. B.
‘P.S.—Mr. Nicholls has finished reading Shirley; he is delighted with it. John Brown’s wife seriously thought he had gone wrong in the head as she heard him giving vent to roars of laughter as he sat alone, clapping his hands and stamping on the floor. He would read all the scenes about the curates aloud to Papa. He triumphed in his own character. [468] What Mr. Grant will say is another thing. No matter.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Haworth, July 27th, 1851.
‘Dear Nell,—I hope you have taken no cold from your wretched journey home; you see you should have taken my advice and stayed till Saturday. Didn’t I tell you I had a “presentiment” it would be better for you to do so?
‘I am glad you found your mother pretty well. Is she disposed to excuse the wretched petrified condition of the bilberry preserve, in consideration of the intent of the donor? It seems they had high company while you were away. You see what you lose by coming to Haworth. No events here since your departure except a long letter from Miss Martineau. (She did not write the article on “Woman” in the Westminster; by the way, it is the production of a man, and one of the first philosophers and political economists and metaphysicians of the day.) [469] Item, the departure of Mr. Nicholls for Ireland, and his inviting himself on the eve thereof to come and take a farewell tea; good, mild, uncontentious. Item, a note from the stiff-like chap who called about the epitaph for his cousin. I inclose this—a finer gem in its way it would be difficult to conceive. You need not, however, be at the trouble of returning it. How are they at Hunsworth yet? It is no use saying whether I am solitary or not; I drive on very well, and papa continues pretty well.—Yours faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.’
I print the next letter here because, although it contains no reference to Mr. Nicholls, it has a bearing upon the letter following it. Dr. Wheelwright shared Mr. Brontë’s infirmity of defective eyesight.
TO MISS LÆTITIA WHEELWRIGHT
‘Haworth, April 12th, 1852.
‘Dear Lætitia,—Your last letter gave me much concern. I had hoped you were long ere this restored to your usual health, and it both pained and surprised me to hear that you still suffer so much from debility. I cannot help thinking your constitution is naturally sound and healthy. Can it be the air of London which disagrees with you? For myself, I struggled through the winter and the early part of spring often with great difficulty. My friend stayed with me a few days in the early part of January—she could not be spared longer. I was better during her visit, but had a relapse soon after she left me, which reduced my strength very much. It cannot be denied that the solitude of my position fearfully aggravated its other evils. Some long, stormy days and nights there were when I felt such a craving for support and companionship as I cannot express. Sleepless, I lay awake night after night; weak and unable to occupy myself, I sat in my chair day after day, the saddest memories my only company. It was a time I shall never forget, but God sent it and it must have been for the best.
‘I am better now, and very grateful do I feel for the restoration of tolerable health; but, as if there was always to be some affliction, papa, who enjoyed wonderful health during the whole winter, is ailing with his spring attack of bronchitis. I earnestly trust it may pass over in the comparatively ameliorated form in which it has hitherto shown itself.
‘Let me not forget to answer your question about the cataract. Tell your papa my father was seventy at the time he underwent an operation; he was most reluctant to try the experiment—could not believe that at his age and with his want of robust strength it would succeed. I was obliged to be very decided in the matter and to act entirely on my own responsibility. Nearly six years have now elapsed since the cataract was extracted (it was not merely depressed). He has never once, during that time, regretted the step, and a day seldom passes that he does not express gratitude and pleasure at the restoration of that inestimable privilege of vision whose loss he once knew.
‘I hope the next tidings you hear of your brother Charles will be satisfactory for his parents’ and sisters’ sake as well as his own. Your poor mamma has had many successive trials, and her uncomplaining resignation seems to offer us all an example worthy to be followed. Remember me kindly to her, to your papa, and all your circle, and—Believe me, with best wishes to yourself, yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO REV. P. BRONTË, HAWORTH, YORKS
‘Cliff House, Filey, June 2nd, 1852.
‘Dear Papa,—Thank you for your letter, which I was so glad to get that I think I must answer it by return of post. I had expected one yesterday, and was perhaps a little unreasonably anxious when disappointed, but the weather has been so very cold that I feared either you were ill or Martha worse. I hope Martha will take care of herself. I cannot help feeling a little uneasy about her.
‘On the whole I get on very well here, but I have not bathed yet as I am told it is much too cold and too early in the season. The sea is very grand. Yesterday it was a somewhat unusually high tide, and I stood about an hour on the cliffs yesterday afternoon watching the tumbling in of great tawny turbid waves, that made the whole shore white with foam and filled the air with a sound hollower and deeper than thunder. There are so very few visitors at Filey yet that I and a few sea-birds and fishing-boats have often the whole expanse of sea, shore, and cliff to ourselves. When the tide is out the sands are wide, long, and smooth, and very pleasant to walk on. When the high tides are in, not a vestige of sand remains. I saw a great dog rush into the sea yesterday, and swim and bear up against the waves like a seal. I wonder what Flossy would say to that.
‘On Sunday afternoon I went to a church which I should like Mr. Nicholls to see. It was certainly not more than thrice the length and breadth of our passage, floored with brick, the walls green with mould, the pews painted white, but the paint almost all worn off with time and decay. At one end there is a little gallery for the singers, and when these personages stood up to perform they all turned their backs upon the congregation, and the congregation turned their backs on the pulpit and parson. The effect of this manœuvre was so ludicrous, I could hardly help laughing; had Mr. Nicholls been there he certainly would have laughed out. Looking up at the gallery and seeing only the broad backs of the singers presented to their audience was excessively grotesque. There is a well-meaning but utterly inactive clergyman at Filey, and Methodists flourish.
‘I cannot help enjoying Mr. Butterfield’s defeat; and yet in one sense this is a bad state of things, calculated to make working people both discontented and insubordinate. Give my kind regards, dear papa, to Mr. Nicholls, Tabby, and Martha. Charge Martha to beware of draughts, and to get such help in her cleaning as she shall need. I hope you will continue well.—Believe me, your affectionate daughter,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘December 15th, 1852.
‘Dear Ellen,—I return the note, which is highly characteristic, and not, I fear, of good omen for the comfort of your visit. There must be something wrong in herself as well as in her servants. I inclose another note which, taken in conjunction with the incident immediately preceding it, and with a long series of indications whose meaning I scarce ventured hitherto to interpret to myself, much less hint to any other, has left on my mind a feeling of deep concern. This note you will see is from Mr. Nicholls.
‘I know not whether you have ever observed him specially when staying here. Your perception is generally quick enough—too quick, I have sometimes thought; yet as you never said anything, I restrained my own dim misgivings, which could not claim the sure guide of vision. What papa has seen or guessed I will not inquire, though I may conjecture. He has minutely noticed all Mr. Nicholls’s low spirits, all his threats of expatriation, all his symptoms of impaired health—noticed them with little sympathy and much indirect sarcasm. On Monday evening Mr. Nicholls was here to tea. I vaguely felt without clearly seeing, as without seeing I have felt for some time, the meaning of his constant looks, and strange, feverish restraint. After tea I withdrew to the dining-room as usual. As usual, Mr. Nicholls sat with papa till between eight and nine o’clock; I then heard him open the parlour door as if going. I expected the clash of the front door. He stopped in the passage; he tapped; like lightning it flashed on me what was coming. He entered; he stood before me. What his words were you can guess; his manner you can hardly realise, nor can I forget it. Shaking from head to foot, looking deadly pale, speaking low, vehemently, yet with difficulty, he made me for the first time feel what it costs a man to declare affection where he doubts response.
‘The spectacle of one ordinarily so statue-like thus trembling, stirred, and overcome, gave me a kind of strange shock. He spoke of sufferings he had borne for months, of sufferings he could endure no longer, and craved leave for some hope. I could only entreat him to leave me then and promise a reply on the morrow. I asked him if he had spoken to papa. He said he dared not. I think I half led, half put him out of the room. When he was gone I immediately went to papa, and told him what had taken place. Agitation and anger disproportionate to the occasion ensued; if I had loved Mr. Nicholls, and had heard such epithets applied to him as were used, it would have transported me past my patience; as it was, my blood boiled with a sense of injustice. But papa worked himself into a state not to be trifled with: the veins on his temples started up like whip-cord, and his eyes became suddenly bloodshot. I made haste to promise that Mr. Nicholls should on the morrow have a distinct refusal.
‘I wrote yesterday and got this note. There is no need to add to this statement any comment. Papa’s vehement antipathy to the bare thought of any one thinking of me as a wife, and Mr. Nicholls’s distress, both give me pain. Attachment to Mr. Nicholls you are aware I never entertained, but the poignant pity inspired by his state on Monday evening, by the hurried revelation of his sufferings for many months, is something galling and irksome. That he cared something for me, and wanted me to care for him, I have long suspected, but I did not know the degree or strength of his feelings. Dear Nell, good-bye.—Yours faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.
‘I have letters from Sir J. K. Shuttleworth and Miss Martineau, but I cannot talk of them now.’
With this letter we see the tragedy beginning. Mr. Brontë, with his daughter’s fame ringing in his ears, thought she should do better than marry a curate with a hundred pounds per annum. For once, and for the only time in his life there is reason to believe, his passions were thoroughly aroused. It is to the honour of Mr. Nicholls, and says much for his magnanimity, that he has always maintained that Mr. Brontë was perfectly justified in the attitude he adopted. His present feeling for Mr. Brontë is one of unbounded respect and reverence, and the occasional unfriendly references to his father-in-law have pained him perhaps even more than when he has been himself the victim.
‘Attachment to Mr. Nicholls you are aware I never entertained.’ A good deal has been made of this and other casual references of Charlotte Brontë to her slight affection for her future husband. Martha Brown, the servant, used in her latter days to say that Charlotte would come into the kitchen and ask her if it was right to marry a man one did not entirely love—and Martha Brown’s esteem for Mr. Nicholls was very great. But it is possible to make too much of all this. It is a commonplace of psychology to say that a woman’s love is of slow growth. It is quite certain that Charlotte Brontë suffered much during this period of alienation and separation; that she alone secured Mr. Nicholls’s return to Haworth, after his temporary estrangement from Mr. Brontë; and finally, that the months of her married life, prior to her last illness, were the happiest she was destined to know.
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Haworth, December 18th, 1852.
‘Dear Nell,—You may well ask, how is it? for I am sure I don’t know. This business would seem to me like a dream, did not my reason tell me it has long been brewing. It puzzles me to comprehend how and whence comes this turbulence of feeling.
‘You ask how papa demeans himself to Mr. Nicholls. I only wish you were here to see papa in his present mood: you would know something of him. He just treats him with a hardness not to be bent, and a contempt not to be propitiated. The two have had no interview as yet; all has been done by letter. Papa wrote, I must say, a most cruel note to Mr. Nicholls on Wednesday. In his state of mind and health (for the poor man is horrifying his landlady, Martha’s mother, by entirely rejecting his meals) I felt that the blow must be parried, and I thought it right to accompany the pitiless despatch by a line to the effect that, while Mr. Nicholls must never expect me to reciprocate the feeling he had expressed, yet, at the same time, I wished to disclaim participation in sentiments calculated to give him pain; and I exhorted him to maintain his courage and spirits. On receiving the two letters, he set off from home. Yesterday came the inclosed brief epistle.
‘You must understand that a good share of papa’s anger arises from the idea, not altogether groundless, that Mr. Nicholls has behaved with disingenuousness in so long concealing his aim. I am afraid also that papa thinks a little too much about his want of money; he says the match would be a degradation, that I should be throwing myself away, that he expects me, if I marry at all, to do very differently; in short, his manner of viewing the subject is on the whole far from being one in which I can sympathise. My own objections arise from a sense of incongruity and uncongeniality in feelings, tastes, principles.
‘How are you getting on, dear Nell, and how are all at Brookroyd? Remember me kindly to everybody.—Yours, wishing devoutly that papa would resume his tranquillity, and Mr. Nicholls his beef and pudding,
‘C. Brontë.
‘I am glad to say that the incipient inflammation in papa’s eye is disappearing.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘January 2nd, 1853.
‘Dear Nell,—I thought of you on New Year’s night, and hope you got well over your formidable tea-making. I trust that Tuesday and Wednesday will also pass pleasantly. I am busy too in my little way preparing to go to London this week, a matter which necessitates some little application to the needle. I find it is quite necessary I should go to superintend the press, as Mr. Smith seems quite determined not to let the printing get on till I come. I have actually only received three proof-sheets since I was at Brookroyd. Papa wants me to go too, to be out of the way, I suppose; but I am sorry for one other person whom nobody pities but me. Martha is bitter against him; John Brown says “he should like to shoot him.” They don’t understand the nature of his feelings, but I see now what they are. He is one of those who attach themselves to very few, whose sensations are close and deep, like an underground stream, running strong, but in a narrow channel. He continues restless and ill; he carefully performs the occasional duty, but does not come near the church, procuring a substitute every Sunday. A few days since he wrote to papa requesting permission to withdraw his resignation. Papa answered that he should only do so on condition of giving his written promise never again to broach the obnoxious subject either to him or to me. This he has evaded doing, so the matter remains unsettled. I feel persuaded the termination will be his departure for Australia. Dear Nell, without loving him, I don’t like to think of him suffering in solitude, and wish him anywhere so that he were happier. He and papa have never met or spoken yet. I am very glad to learn that your mother is pretty well, and also that the piece of challenged work is progressing. I hope you will not be called away to Norfolk before I come home: I should like you to pay a visit to Haworth first. Write again soon.—Yours faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘March 4th, 1853.
‘Dear Ellen,—We had the parsons to supper as well as to tea. Mr. N. demeaned himself not quite pleasantly. I thought he made no effort to struggle with his dejection but gave way to it in a manner to draw notice; the Bishop was obviously puzzled by it. Mr. Nicholls also showed temper once or twice in speaking to papa. Martha was beginning to tell me of certain “flaysome” looks also, but I desired not to hear of them. The fact is, I shall be most thankful when he is well away. I pity him, but I don’t like that dark gloom of his. He dogged me up the lane after the evening service in no pleasant manner. He stopped also in the passage after the Bishop and the other clergy were gone into the room, and it was because I drew away and went upstairs that he gave that look which filled Martha’s soul with horror. She, it seems, meantime, was making it her business to watch him from the kitchen door. If Mr. Nicholls be a good man at bottom, it is a sad thing that nature has not given him the faculty to put goodness into a more attractive form. Into the bargain of all the rest he managed to get up a most pertinacious and needless dispute with the Inspector, in listening to which all my old unfavourable impressions revived so strongly, I fear my countenance could not but shew them.
‘Dear Nell, I consider that on the whole it is a mercy you have been at home and not at Norfolk during the late cold weather. Love to all at Brookroyd.—Yours faithfully,
‘c. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘March 9th, 1853.
‘Dear Ellen,—I am sure Miss Wooler would enjoy her visit to you, as much as you her company. Dear Nell, I thank you sincerely for your discreet and friendly silence on the point alluded to. I had feared it would be discussed between you two, and had an inexpressible shrinking at the thought; now less than ever does it seem a matter open to discussion. I hear nothing, and you must quite understand that if I feel any uneasiness it is not that of confirmed and fixed regard, but that anxiety which is inseparable from a state of absolute uncertainty about a somewhat momentous matter. I do not know, I am not sure myself, that any other termination would be better than lasting estrangement and unbroken silence. Yet a good deal of pain has been and must be gone through in that case. However, to each his burden.
‘I have not yet read the papers; D.V. I will send them to-morrow.—Yours faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.
‘Understand that in whatever I have said above, it was not for pity or sympathy. I hardly pity myself. Only I wish that in all matters in this world there was fair and open dealing, and no underhand work.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Haworth, April 6th, 1853.
‘Dear Ellen,—My visit to Manchester is for the present put off by Mr. Morgan having written to say that since papa will not go to Buckingham to see him he will come to Yorkshire to see papa; when, I don’t yet know, and I trust in goodness he will not stay long, as papa really cannot bear putting out of his way. I must wait, however, till the infliction is over.
‘You ask about Mr. Nicholls. I hear he has got a curacy, but do not yet know where. I trust the news is true. He and papa never speak. He seems to pass a desolate life. He has allowed late circumstances so to act on him as to freeze up his manner and overcast his countenance not only to those immediately concerned but to every one. He sits drearily in his rooms. If Mr. Grant or any other clergyman calls to see, and as they think, to cheer him, he scarcely speaks. I find he tells them nothing, seeks no confidant, rebuffs all attempts to penetrate his mind. I own I respect him for this. He still lets Flossy go to his rooms, and takes him to walk. He still goes over to see Mr. Sowden sometimes, and, poor fellow, that is all. He looks ill and miserable. I think and trust in Heaven that he will be better as soon as he fairly gets away from Haworth. I pity him inexpressibly. We never meet nor speak, nor dare I look at him; silent pity is just all that I can give him, and as he knows nothing about that, it does not comfort. He is now grown so gloomy and reserved that nobody seems to like him. His fellow-curates shun trouble in that shape; the lower orders dislike it. Papa has a perfect antipathy to him, and he, I fear, to papa. Martha hates him. I think he might almost be dying and they would not speak a friendly word to or of him. How much of all this he deserves I can’t tell; certainly he never was agreeable or amiable, and is less so now than ever, and alas! I do not know him well enough to be sure that there is truth and true affection, or only rancour and corroding disappointment at the bottom of his chagrin. In this state of things I must be, and I am, entirely passive. I may be losing the purest gem, and to me far the most precious, life can give—genuine attachment—or I may be escaping the yoke of a morose temper. In this doubt conscience will not suffer me to take one step in opposition to papa’s will, blended as that will is with the most bitter and unreasonable prejudices. So I just leave the matter where we must leave all important matters.
‘Remember me kindly to all at Brookroyd, and—Believe me, yours faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘May 16th, 1853.
‘Dear Ellen,—The east winds about which you inquire have spared me wonderfully till to-day, when I feel somewhat sick physically, and not very blithe mentally. I am not sure that the east winds are entirely to blame for this ailment. Yesterday was a strange sort of a day at church. It seems as if I were to be punished for my doubts about the nature and truth of poor Mr. Nicholls’s regard. Having ventured on Whit Sunday to stop the sacrament, I got a lesson not to be repeated. He struggled, faltered, then lost command over himself—stood before my eyes and in the sight of all the communicants white, shaking, voiceless. Papa was not there, thank God! Joseph Redman spoke some words to him. He made a great effort, but could only with difficulty whisper and falter through the service. I suppose he thought this would be the last time; he goes either this week or the next. I heard the women sobbing round, and I could not quite check my own tears. What had happened was reported to papa either by Joseph Redman or John Brown; it excited only anger, and such expressions as “unmanly driveller.” Compassion or relenting is no more to be looked for than sap from firewood.
‘I never saw a battle more sternly fought with the feelings than Mr. Nicholls fights with his, and when he yields momentarily, you are almost sickened by the sense of the strain upon him. However, he is to go, and I cannot speak to him or look at him or comfort him a whit, and I must submit. Providence is over all, that is the only consolation.—Yours faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘May 19th, 1853.
‘Dear Ellen,—I cannot help feeling a certain satisfaction in finding that the people here are getting up a subscription to offer a testimonial of respect to Mr. Nicholls on his leaving the place. Many are expressing both their commiseration and esteem for him. The Churchwardens recently put the question to him plainly: Why was he going? Was it Mr. Brontë’s fault or his own? “His own,” he answered. Did he blame Mr. Brontë? “No! he did not: if anybody was wrong it was himself.” Was he willing to go? “No! it gave him great pain.” Yet he is not always right. I must be just. He shows a curious mixture of honour and obstinacy—feeling and sullenness. Papa addressed him at the school tea-drinking, with constrained civility, but still with civility. He did not reply civilly; he cut short further words. This sort of treatment offered in public is what papa never will forget or forgive, it inspires him with a silent bitterness not to be expressed. I am afraid both are unchristian in their mutual feelings. Nor do I know which of them is least accessible to reason or least likely to forgive. It is a dismal state of things.
‘The weather is fine now, dear Nell. We will take these sunny days as a good omen for your visit to Yarmouth. With kind regards to all at Brookroyd, and best wishes to yourself,—I am, yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Haworth, May 27th, 1853.
‘Dear Ellen,—You will want to know about the leave-taking? The whole matter is but a painful subject, but I must treat it briefly. The testimonial was presented in a public meeting. Mr. Taylor and Mr. Grant were there. Papa was not very well and I advised him to stay away, which he did. As to the last Sunday, it was a cruel struggle. Mr. Nicholls ought not to have had to take any duty.
‘He left Haworth this morning at six o’clock. Yesterday evening he called to render into papa’s hands the deeds of the National School, and to say good-bye. They were busy cleaning—washing the paint, etc., in the dining-room, so he did not find me there. I would not go into the parlour to speak to him in papa’s presence. He went out, thinking he was not to see me; and indeed, till the very last moment, I thought it best not. But perceiving that he stayed long before going out at the gate, and remembering his long grief, I took courage and went out, trembling and miserable. I found him leaning against the garden door in a paroxysm of anguish, sobbing as women never sob. Of course I went straight to him. Very few words were interchanged, those few barely articulate. Several things I should have liked to ask him were swept entirely from my memory. Poor fellow! But he wanted such hope and such encouragement as I could not give him. Still, I trust he must know now that I am not cruelly blind and indifferent to his constancy and grief. For a few weeks he goes to the south of England, afterwards he takes a curacy somewhere in Yorkshire, but I don’t know where.
‘Papa has been far from strong lately. I dare not mention Mr. Nicholls’s name to him. He speaks of him quietly and without opprobrium to others, but to me he is implacable on the matter. However, he is gone—gone, and there’s an end of it. I see no chance of hearing a word about him in future, unless some stray shred of intelligence comes through Mr. Sowden or some other second-hand source. In all this it is not I who am to be pitied at all, and of course nobody pities me. They all think in Haworth that I have disdainfully refused him. If pity would do Mr. Nicholls any good, he ought to have, and I believe has it. They may abuse me if they will; whether they do or not I can’t tell.
‘Write soon and say how your prospects proceed. I trust they will daily brighten.—Yours faithfully,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS LÆTITIA WHEELWRIGHT
‘Haworth, March 18th, 1854.
‘My dear Lætitia,—I was very glad to see your handwriting again; it is, I believe, a year since I heard from you. Again and again you have recurred to my thoughts lately, and I was beginning to have some sad presages as to the cause of your silence. Your letter happily does away with all these; it brings, on the whole, good tidings both of your papa, mamma, your sister, and, last but not least, your dear respected English self.
‘My dear father has borne the severe winter very well, a circumstance for which I feel the more thankful, as he had many weeks of very precarious health last summer, following an attack from which he suffered last June, and which for a few hours deprived him totally of sight, though neither his mind, speech, nor even his powers of motion were in the least affected. I can hardly tell you how thankful I was, dear Lætitia, when, after that dreary and almost despairing interval of utter darkness, some gleam of daylight became visible to him once more. I had feared that paralysis had seized the optic nerve. A sort of mist remained for a long time, and indeed his vision is not yet perfectly clear, but he can read, write, and walk about, and he preaches twice every Sunday, the curate only reading the prayers. You can well understand how earnestly I pray that sight may be spared him to the end; he so dreads the privation of blindness. His mind is just as strong and active as ever, and politics interest him as they do your papa. The Czar, the war, the alliance between France and England—into all these things he throws himself heart and soul. They seem to carry him back to his comparatively young days, and to renew the excitement of the last great European struggle. Of course, my father’s sympathies, and mine too, are all with justice and Europe against tyranny and Russia.
‘Circumstanced as I have been, you will comprehend that I had neither the leisure nor inclination to go from home much during the past year. I spent a week with Mrs. Gaskell in the spring, and a fortnight with some other friends more recently, and that includes the whole of my visiting since I saw you last. My life is indeed very uniform and retired, more so than is quite healthful either for mind or body; yet I feel reason for often renewed feelings of gratitude in the sort of support which still comes and cheers me from time to time. My health, though not unbroken, is, I sometimes fancy, rather stronger on the whole than it was three years ago; headache and dyspepsia are my worst ailments. Whether I shall come up to town this season for a few days I do not yet know; but if I do I shall hope to call in Phillimore Place. With kindest remembrances to your papa, mamma, and sisters,—I am, dear Lætitia, affectionately yours,
‘C. Brontë.’