Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle, by Clement K. Shorter

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Title: Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle


Author: Clement K. Shorter



Release Date: August 8, 2006  [eBook #19011]

Language: English

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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND HER CIRCLE***

Transcribed from the 1896 Hodder and Stoughton edition by Les Bowler.

CHARLOTTE BRONTË AND HER CIRCLE

BY CLEMENT K. SHORTER

LONDON

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

27 PATERNOSTER ROW

1896

p. vPREFACE

It is claimed for the following book of some five hundred pages that the larger part of it is an addition of entirely new material to the romantic story of the Brontës.  For this result, but very small credit is due to me; and my very hearty acknowledgments must be made, in the first place, to the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, for whose generous surrender of personal inclination I must ever be grateful.  It has been with extreme unwillingness that Mr. Nicholls has broken the silence of forty years, and he would not even now have consented to the publication of certain letters concerning his marriage, had he not been aware that these letters were already privately printed and in the hands of not less than eight or ten people.  To Miss Ellen Nussey of Gomersall, I have also to render thanks p. vifor having placed the many letters in her possession at my disposal, and for having furnished a great deal of interesting information.  Without the letters from Charlotte Brontë to Mr. W. S. Williams, which were kindly lent to me by his son and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Thornton Williams, my book would have been the poorer.  Sir Wemyss Reid, Mr. J. J. Stead, of Heckmondwike, Mr. Butler Wood, of Bradford, Mr. W. W. Yates, of Dewsbury, Mr. Erskine Stuart, Mr. Buxton Forman, and Mr. Thomas J. Wise are among the many Brontë specialists who have helped me with advice or with the loan of material.  Mr. Wise, in particular, has lent me many valuable manuscripts.  Finally, I have to thank my friend Dr. Robertson Nicoll for the kindly pressure which has practically compelled me to prepare this little volume amid a multitude of journalistic duties.

            CLEMENT K. SHORTER.
198 Strand, London,
      September 1st, 1896.

p. viiCONTENTS

PRELIMINARY
CHAPTER I    PATRICK BRONTË AND MARIA HIS WIFE
CHAPTER II  CHILDHOOD
CHAPTER III  SCHOOL AND GOVERNESS LIFE
CHAPTER IV  PENSIONNAT HÉGER, BRUSSELS
CHAPTER V    PATRICK BRANWELL BRONTË
p. viiiCHAPTER VI  EMILY JANE BRONTË
CHAPTER VII  ANNE BRONTË
CHAPTER VIII ELLEN NUSSEY
CHAPTER IX  MARY TAYLOR
CHAPTER X    MARGARET WOOLER
CHAPTER XI  THE CURATES AT HAWORTH
CHAPTER XII  CHARLOTTE BRONTË’S LOVERS
CHAPTER XIII LITERARY AMBITIONS
p. ixCHAPTER XIV  WILLIAM SMITH WILLIAMS
CHAPTER XV  WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
CHAPTER XVI  LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS
CHAPTER XVII ARTHUR BELL NICHOLLS

p. xiLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHARLOTTE BRONTË                              Frontispiece
PATRICK BRANWELL BRONTË                        facing page 120
FACSIMILE OF PAGE OF EMILY BRONTË’S DIARY      facing page 146
FACSIMILE OF TWO PAGES OF EMILY BRONTË’S DIARY facing page 154
ANNE BRONTË                                    facing page 182
MISS ELLEN NUSSEY AS A SCHOOLGIRL            )
MISS ELLEN NUSSEY TO-DAY                    ) facing page 207
THE REV. ARTHUR BELL NICHOLLS                  facing page 467

p. xiiiA BRONTË CHRONOLOGY

p. 1PRELIMINARY: MRS. GASKELL

In the whole of English biographical literature there is no book that can compare in widespread interest with the Life of Charlotte Brontë by Mrs. Gaskell.  It has held a position of singular popularity for forty years; and while biography after biography has come and gone, it still commands a place side by side with Boswell’s Johnson and Lockhart’s Scott.  As far as mere readers are concerned, it may indeed claim its hundreds as against the tens of intrinsically more important rivals.  There are obvious reasons for this success.  Mrs. Gaskell was herself a popular novelist, who commanded a very wide audience, and Cranford, at least, has taken a place among the classics of our literature.  She brought to bear upon the biography of Charlotte Brontë all those literary gifts which had made the charm of her seven volumes of romance.  And these gifts were employed upon a romance of real life, not less fascinating than anything which imagination could have furnished.  Charlotte Brontë’s success as an author turned the eyes of the world upon her.  Thackeray had sent her his Vanity Fair before he knew her name or sex.  The precious volume lies before me—

p. 2And Thackeray did not send many inscribed copies of his books even to successful authors.  Speculation concerning the author of Jane Eyre was sufficiently rife during those seven sad years of literary renown to make a biography imperative when death came to Charlotte Brontë in 1855.  All the world had heard something of the three marvellous sisters, daughters of a poor parson in Yorkshire, going one after another to their death with such melancholy swiftness, but leaving—two of them, at least—imperishable work behind them.  The old blind father and the bereaved husband read the confused eulogy and criticism, sometimes with a sad pleasure at the praise, oftener with a sadder pain at the grotesque inaccuracy.  Small wonder that it became impressed upon Mr. Brontë’s mind that an authoritative biography was desirable.  His son-in-law, Mr. Arthur Bell Nicholls, who lived with him in the Haworth parsonage during the six weary years which succeeded Mrs. Nicholls’s death, was not so readily won to the unveiling of his wife’s inner life; and although we, who read Mrs. Gaskell’s Memoir, have every reason to be thankful for Mr. Brontë’s decision, peace of mind would undoubtedly have been more assured to Charlotte Brontë’s surviving relatives had the most rigid silence been maintained.  The book, when it appeared in 1857, gave infinite pain to a number of people, including Mr. Brontë and Mr. Nicholls; and Mrs. Gaskell’s subsequent experiences had the effect of persuading her that all biographical literature was intolerable and undesirable.  She would seem to have given instructions that no biography of herself should be written; and now that thirty years have passed since her death we have no substantial record of one of the most fascinating women of her age.  The loss to literature has been forcibly brought home to the present writer, who has in his possession a bundle of letters written by Mrs. Gaskell to numerous friends of Charlotte Brontë during the progress of the biography.  They serve, p. 3all of them, to impress one with the singular charm of the woman, her humanity and breadth of sympathy.  They make us think better of Mrs. Gaskell, as Thackeray’s letters to Mrs. Brookfield make us think better of the author of Vanity Fair.

Apart from these letters, a journey in the footsteps, as it were, of Mrs. Gaskell reveals to us the remarkable conscientiousness with which she set about her task.  It would have been possible, with so much fame behind her, to have secured an equal success, and certainly an equal pecuniary reward, had she merely written a brief monograph with such material as was voluntarily placed in her hands.  Mrs. Gaskell possessed a higher ideal of a biographer’s duties.  She spared no pains to find out the facts; she visited every spot associated with the name of Charlotte Brontë—Thornton, Haworth, Cowan Bridge, Birstall, Brussels—and she wrote countless letters to the friends of Charlotte Brontë’s earlier days.

But why, it may be asked, was Mrs. Gaskell selected as biographer?  The choice was made by Mr. Brontë, and not, as has been suggested, by some outside influence.  When Mr. Brontë had once decided that there should be an authoritative biography—and he alone was active in the matter—there could be but little doubt upon whom the task would fall.  Among all the friends whom fame had brought to Charlotte, Mrs. Gaskell stood prominent for her literary gifts and her large-hearted sympathy.  She had made the acquaintance of Miss Brontë when the latter was on a visit to Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, in 1850; and a letter from Charlotte to her father, and others to Mr. W. S. Williams, indicate the beginning of a friendship which was to leave so permanent a record in literary history:—

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘20th November, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—You said that if I wished for any copies p. 4of Shirley to be sent to individuals I was to name the parties.  I have thought of one person to whom I should much like a copy to be offered—Harriet Martineau.  For her character—as revealed in her works—I have a lively admiration, a deep esteem.  Will you inclose with the volume the accompanying note?

‘The letter you forwarded this morning was from Mrs. Gaskell, authoress of Mary Barton; she said I was not to answer it, but I cannot help doing so.  The note brought the tears to my eyes.  She is a good, she is a great woman.  Proud am I that I can touch a chord of sympathy in souls so noble.  In Mrs. Gaskell’s nature it mournfully pleases me to fancy a remote affinity to my sister Emily.  In Miss Martineau’s mind I have always felt the same, though there are wide differences.  Both these ladies are above me—certainly far my superiors in attainments and experience.  I think I could look up to them if I knew them.—I am, dear sir, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘November 29th, 1849.

‘Dear Sir,—I inclose two notes for postage.  The note you sent yesterday was from Harriet Martineau; its contents were more than gratifying.  I ought to be thankful, and I trust I am, for such testimonies of sympathy from the first order of minds.  When Mrs. Gaskell tells me she shall keep my works as a treasure for her daughters, and when Harriet Martineau testifies affectionate approbation, I feel the sting taken from the strictures of another class of critics.  My resolution of seclusion withholds me from communicating further with these ladies at present, but I now know how they are inclined to me—I know how my writings have affected their wise and pure minds.  The knowledge is present support and, perhaps, may be future armour.

‘I trust Mrs. Williams’s health and, consequently, your spirits are by this time quite restored.  If all be well, perhaps I shall see you next week.—Yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

p. 5TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘January 1st, 1850.

‘My dear Sir,—May I beg that a copy of Wuthering Heights may be sent to Mrs. Gaskell; her present address is 3 Sussex Place, Regent’s Park.  She has just sent me the Moorland Cottage.  I felt disappointed about the publication of that book, having hoped it would be offered to Smith, Elder & Co.; but it seems she had no alternative, as it was Mr. Chapman himself who asked her to write a Christmas book.  On my return home yesterday I found two packets from Cornhill directed in two well-known hands waiting for me.  You are all very very good.

‘I trust to have derived benefit from my visit to Miss Martineau.  A visit more interesting I certainly never paid.  If self-sustaining strength can be acquired from example, I ought to have got good.  But my nature is not hers; I could not make it so though I were to submit it seventy times seven to the furnace of affliction, and discipline it for an age under the hammer and anvil of toil and self-sacrifice.  Perhaps if I was like her I should not admire her so much as I do.  She is somewhat absolute, though quite unconsciously so; but she is likewise kind, with an affection at once abrupt and constant, whose sincerity you cannot doubt.  It was delightful to sit near her in the evenings and hear her converse, myself mute.  She speaks with what seems to me a wonderful fluency and eloquence.  Her animal spirits are as unflagging as her intellectual powers.  I was glad to find her health excellent.  I believe neither solitude nor loss of friends would break her down.  I saw some faults in her, but somehow I liked them for the sake of her good points.  It gave me no pain to feel insignificant, mentally and corporeally, in comparison with her.

‘Trusting that you and yours are well, and sincerely wishing you all a happy new year,—I am, my dear sir, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO REV. P. BRONTË

‘The Briery, Windermere,
‘August 10th, 1850.

‘Dear Papa,—I reached this place yesterday evening at eight p. 6o’clock, after a safe though rather tedious journey.  I had to change carriages three times and to wait an hour and a half at Lancaster.  Sir James came to meet me at the station; both he and Lady Shuttleworth gave me a very kind reception.  This place is exquisitely beautiful, though the weather is cloudy, misty, and stormy; but the sun bursts out occasionally and shows the hills and the lake.  Mrs. Gaskell is coming here this evening, and one or two other people.  Miss Martineau, I am sorry to say, I shall not see, as she is already gone from home for the autumn.

‘Be kind enough to write by return of post and tell me how you are getting on and how you are.  Give my kind regards to Tabby and Martha, and—Believe me, dear papa, your affectionate daughter,

‘C. Brontë.’

And this is how she writes to a friend from Haworth, on her return, after that first meeting:—

‘Lady Shuttleworth never got out, being confined to the house with a cold; but fortunately there was Mrs. Gaskell, the authoress of Mary Barton, who came to the Briery the day after me.  I was truly glad of her companionship.  She is a woman of the most genuine talent, of cheerful, pleasing, and cordial manners, and, I believe, of a kind and good heart.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘September 20th, 1850.

‘My dear Sir,—I herewith send you a very roughly written copy of what I have to say about my sisters.  When you have read it you can better judge whether the word “Notice” or “Memoir” is the most appropriate.  I think the former.  Memoir seems to me to express a more circumstantial and different sort of account.  My aim is to give a just idea of their identity, not to write any narration of their simple, uneventful lives.  I depend on you for faithfully pointing out whatever may strike you as faulty.  I could not write it in the conventional form—that I found impossible.

‘It gives me real pleasure to hear of your son’s success.  I p. 7trust he may persevere and go on improving, and give his parents cause for satisfaction and honest pride.

‘I am truly pleased, too, to learn that Miss Kavanagh has managed so well with Mr. Colburn.  Her position seems to me one deserving of all sympathy.  I often think of her.  Will her novel soon be published?  Somehow I expect it to be interesting.

‘I certainly did hope that Mrs. Gaskell would offer her next work to Smith & Elder.  She and I had some conversation about publishers—a comparison of our literary experiences was made.  She seemed much struck with the differences between hers and mine, though I did not enter into details or tell her all.  Unless I greatly mistake, she and you and Mr. Smith would get on well together; but one does not know what causes there may be to prevent her from doing as she would wish in such a case.  I think Mr. Smith will not object to my occasionally sending her any of the Cornhill books that she may like to see.  I have already taken the liberty of lending her Wordsworth’s Prelude, as she was saying how much she wished to have the opportunity of reading it.

‘I do not tack remembrances to Mrs. Williams and your daughters and Miss Kavanagh to all my letters, because that makes an empty form of what should be a sincere wish, but I trust this mark of courtesy and regard, though rarely expressed, is always understood.—Believe me, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

Miss Brontë twice visited Mrs. Gaskell in her Manchester home, first in 1851 and afterwards in 1853, and concerning this latter visit we have the following letter:—

TO MRS. GASKELL, Manchester

‘Haworth, April 14th, 1853.

‘My dear Mrs. Gaskell,—Would it suit you if I were to come next Thursday, the 21st?

‘If that day tallies with your convenience, and if my father continues as well as he is now, I know of no engagement on my part which need compel me longer to defer the pleasure of seeing you.

p. 8‘I should arrive by the train which reaches Manchester at 7 o’clock p.m.  That, I think, would be about your tea-time, and, of course, I should dine before leaving home.  I always like evening for an arrival; it seems more cosy and pleasant than coming in about the busy middle of the day.  I think if I stay a week that will be a very long visit; it will give you time to get well tired of me.

‘Remember me very kindly to Mr. Gaskell and Marianna.  As to Mesdames Flossy and Julia, those venerable ladies are requested beforehand to make due allowance for the awe with which they will be sure to impress a diffident admirer.  I am sorry I shall not see Meta.—Believe me, my dear Mrs. Gaskell, yours affectionately and sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

In the autumn of 1853 Mrs. Gaskell returned Charlotte Brontë’s visit at Haworth.  She was not, however, at Charlotte’s wedding in Haworth Church. [8]

TO MISS WOOLER

‘Haworth, September 8th.

‘My dear Miss Wooler,—Your letter was truly kind, and made me warmly wish to join you.  My prospects, however, of being able to leave home continue very unsettled.  I am expecting Mrs. Gaskell next week or the week after, the day being yet undetermined.  She was to have come in June, but then my severe attack of influenza rendered it impossible that I should receive or entertain her.  Since that time she has been absent on the Continent with her husband and two eldest girls; and just before I received yours I had a letter from her volunteering a visit at a vague date, which I requested her to fix as soon as possible.  My father has been much better during the last three or four days.

‘When I know anything certain I will write to you again.—Believe me, my dear Miss Wooler, yours respectfully and affectionately,

‘C. Brontë.’

p. 9But the friendship, which commenced so late in Charlotte Brontë’s life, never reached the stage of downright intimacy.  Of this there is abundant evidence in the biography; and Mrs. Gaskell was forced to rely upon the correspondence of older friends of Charlotte’s.  Mr. George Smith, the head of the firm of Smith and Elder, furnished some twenty letters.  Mr. W. S. Williams, to whom is due the credit of ‘discovering’ the author of Jane Eyre, lent others; and another member of Messrs. Smith and Elder’s staff, Mr. James Taylor, furnished half-a-dozen more; but the best help came from another quarter.

Of the two schoolfellows with whom Charlotte Brontë regularly corresponded from childhood till death, Mary Taylor and Ellen Nussey, the former had destroyed every letter; and thus it came about that by far the larger part of the correspondence in Mrs. Gaskell’s biography was addressed to Miss Ellen Nussey, now as ‘My dearest Nell,’ now simply as ‘E.’  The unpublished correspondence in my hands, which refers to the biography, opens with a letter from Mrs. Gaskell to Miss Nussey, dated July 6th, 1855.  It relates how, in accordance with a request from Mr. Brontë, she had undertaken to write the work, and had been over to Haworth.  There she had made the acquaintance of Mr. Nicholls for the first time.  She told Mr. Brontë how much she felt the difficulty of the task she had undertaken.  Nevertheless, she sincerely desired to make his daughter’s character known to all who took deep interest in her writings.  Both Mr. Brontë and Mr. Nicholls agreed to help to the utmost, although Mrs. Gaskell was struck by the fact that it was Mr. Nicholls, and not Mr. Brontë, who was more intellectually alive to the attraction which such a book would have for the public.  His feelings were opposed to any biography at all; but he had yielded to Mr. Brontë’s ‘impetuous wish,’ and he brought down all the materials he could find, in the shape of about a dozen p. 10letters.  Mr. Nicholls, moreover, told Mrs. Gaskell that Miss Nussey was the person of all others to apply to; that she had been the friend of his wife ever since Charlotte was fifteen, and that he was writing to Miss Nussey to beg her to let Mrs. Gaskell see some of the correspondence.

But here is Mr. Nicholls’s actual letter, unearthed after forty years, as well as earlier letters from and to Miss Nussey, which would seem to indicate a suggestion upon the part of ‘E’ that some attempt should be made to furnish a biography of her friend—if only to set at rest, once and for all, the speculations of the gossiping community with whom Charlotte Brontë’s personality was still shrouded in mystery; and indeed it is clear from these letters that it is to Miss Nussey that we really owe Mrs. Gaskell’s participation in the matter:—

TO REV. A. B. NICHOLLS

‘Brookroyd, June 6th, 1855.

‘Dear Mr. Nicholls,—I have been much hurt and pained by the perusal of an article in Sharpe for this month, entitled “A Few Words about Jane Eyre.”  You will be certain to see the article, and I am sure both you and Mr. Brontë will feel acutely the misrepresentations and the malignant spirit which characterises it.  Will you suffer the article to pass current without any refutations?  The writer merits the contempt of silence, but there will be readers and believers.  Shall such be left to imbibe a tissue of malignant falsehoods, or shall an attempt be made to do justice to one who so highly deserved justice, whose very name those who best knew her but speak with reverence and affection?  Should not her aged father be defended from the reproach the writer coarsely attempts to bring upon him?

‘I wish Mrs. Gaskell, who is every way capable, would undertake a reply, and would give a sound castigation to the writer.  Her personal acquaintance with Haworth, the Parsonage, and its inmates, fits her for the task, and if on other p. 11subjects she lacked information I would gladly supply her with facts sufficient to set aside much that is asserted, if you yourself are not provided with all the information that is needed on the subjects produced.  Will you ask Mrs. Gaskell to undertake this just and honourable defence?  I think she would do it gladly.  She valued dear Charlotte, and such an act of friendship, performed with her ability and power, could only add to the laurels she has already won.  I hope you and Mr. Brontë are well.  My kind regards to both.—Believe me, yours sincerely,

‘E. Nussey.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, June 11th, 1855.

‘Dear Miss Nussey,—We had not seen the article in Sharpe, and very possibly should not, if you had not directed our attention to it.  We ordered a copy, and have now read the “Few Words about Jane Eyre.”  The writer has certainly made many mistakes, but apparently not from any unkind motive, as he professes to be an admirer of Charlotte’s works, pays a just tribute to her genius, and in common with thousands deplores her untimely death.  His design seems rather to be to gratify the curiosity of the multitude in reference to one who had made such a sensation in the literary world.  But even if the article had been of a less harmless character, we should not have felt inclined to take any notice of it, as by doing so we should have given it an importance which it would not otherwise have obtained.  Charlotte herself would have acted thus; and her character stands too high to be injured by the statements in a magazine of small circulation and little influence—statements which the writer prefaces with the remark that he does not vouch for their accuracy.  The many laudatory notices of Charlotte and her works which appeared since her death may well make us indifferent to the detractions of a few envious or malignant persons, as there ever will be such.

‘The remarks respecting Mr. Brontë excited in him only amusement—indeed, I have not seen him laugh as much for p. 12some months as he did while I was reading the article to him.  We are both well in health, but lonely and desolate.

‘Mr. Brontë unites with me in kind regards.—Yours sincerely,

‘A. B. Nicholls.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, July 24th, 1855.

‘Dear Miss Nussey,—Some other erroneous notices of Charlotte having appeared, Mr. Brontë has deemed it advisable that some authentic statement should be put forth.  He has therefore adopted your suggestion and applied to Mrs. Gaskell, who has undertaken to write a life of Charlotte.  Mrs. Gaskell came over yesterday and spent a few hours with us.  The greatest difficulty seems to be in obtaining materials to show the development of Charlotte’s character.  For this reason Mrs. Gaskell is anxious to see her letters, especially those of any early date.  I think I understood you to say that you had some; if so, we should feel obliged by your letting us have any that you may think proper, not for publication, but merely to give the writer an insight into her mode of thought.  Of course they will be returned after a little time.

‘I confess that the course most consonant with my own feelings would be to take no steps in the matter, but I do not think it right to offer any opposition to Mr. Brontë’s wishes.

‘We have the same object in view, but should differ in our mode of proceeding.  Mr. Brontë has not been very well.  Excitement on Sunday (our Rush-bearing) and Mrs. Gaskell’s visit yesterday have been rather much for him.—Believe me, sincerely yours,

‘A. B. Nicholls.’

Mrs. Gaskell, however, wanted to make Miss Nussey’s acquaintance, and asked if she might visit her; and added that she would also like to see Miss Wooler, Charlotte’s schoolmistress, if that lady were still alive.  To this letter Miss Nussey made the following reply:—

p. 13TO MRS. GASKELL, Manchester

‘Ilkley, July 26th, 1855.

‘My dear Madam,—Owing to my absence from home your letter has only just reached me.  I had not heard of Mr. Brontë’s request, but I am most heartily glad that he has made it.  A letter from Mr. Nicholls was forwarded along with yours, which I opened first, and was thus prepared for your communication, the subject of which is of the deepest interest to me.  I will do everything in my power to aid the righteous work you have undertaken, but I feel my powers very limited, and apprehend that you may experience some disappointment that I cannot contribute more largely the information which you desire.  I possess a great many letters (for I have destroyed but a small portion of the correspondence), but I fear the early letters are not such as to unfold the character of the writer except in a few points.  You perhaps may discover more than is apparent to me.  You will read them with a purpose—I perused them only with interests of affection.  I will immediately look over the correspondence, and I promise to let you see all that I can confide to your friendly custody.  I regret that my absence from home should have made it impossible for me to have the pleasure of seeing you at Brookroyd at the time you propose.  I am engaged to stay here till Monday week, and shall be happy to see you any day you name after that date, or, if more convenient to you to come Friday or Saturday in next week, I will gladly return in time to give you the meeting.  I am staying with our schoolmistress, Miss Wooler, in this place.  I wish her very much to give me leave to ask you here, but she does not yield to my wishes; it would have been pleasanter to me to talk with you among these hills than sitting in my home and thinking of one who had so often been present there.—I am, my dear madam, yours sincerely,

‘Ellen Nussey.’

Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Nussey met, and the friendship which ensued was closed only by death; and indeed one p. 14of the most beautiful letters in the collection in my hands is one signed ‘Meta Gaskell,’ and dated January 22, 1866.  It tells in detail, with infinite tenderness and pathos, of her mother’s last moments. [14]  That, however, was ten years later than the period with which we are concerned.  In 1856 Mrs. Gaskell was energetically engaged upon a biography of her friend which should lack nothing of thoroughness, as she hoped.  She claimed to have visited the scenes of all the incidents in Charlotte’s life, ‘the two little pieces of private governess-ship excepted.’  She went one day with Mr. Smith to the Chapter Coffee House, where the sisters first stayed in London.  Another day she is in Yorkshire, where she makes the acquaintance of Miss Wooler, which permitted, as she said, ‘a more friendly manner of writing towards Charlotte Brontë’s old schoolmistress.’  Again she is in Brussels, where Madame Héger refused to see her, although M. Héger was kind and communicative, ‘and very much indeed I both like and respect him.’  Her countless questions were exceedingly interesting.  They covered many pages of note-paper.  Did Branwell Brontë know of the publication of Jane Eyre,’ she asks, ‘and how did he receive the news?’  Mrs. Gaskell was persuaded in her own mind that he had never known of its publication, and we shall presently see that she was right.  Charlotte had distinctly informed her, she said, that Branwell was not in a fit condition at the time to be told.  ‘Where did the girls get the books which they read so continually?  Did Emily accompany Charlotte as a pupil when the latter went as a teacher to Roe Head?  Why did not Branwell go to the Royal Academy in London to learn painting?  Did Emily ever go out as a governess?  What were Emily’s religious opinions?  Did she ever make friends?’  Such were the questions which came quick and p. 15fast to Miss Nussey, and Miss Nussey fortunately kept her replies.

TO MRS. GASKELL, Manchester

‘Brookroyd, October 22nd, 1856.

‘My dear Mrs. Gaskell,—If you go to London pray try what may be done with regard to a portrait of dear Charlotte.  It would greatly enhance the value and interest of the memoir, and be such a satisfaction to people to see something that would settle their ideas of the personal appearance of the dear departed one.  It has been a surprise to every stranger, I think, that she was so gentle and lady-like to look upon.

‘Emily Brontë went to Roe Head as pupil when Charlotte went as teacher; she stayed there but two months; she never settled, and was ill from nothing but home-sickness.  Anne took her place and remained about two years.  Emily was a teacher for one six months in a ladies’ school in Halifax or the neighbourhood.  I do not know whether it was conduct or want of finances that prevented Branwell from going to the Royal Academy.  Probably there were impediments of both kinds.

‘I am afraid if you give me my name I shall feel a prominence in the book that I altogether shrink from.  My very last wish would be to appear in the book more than is absolutely necessary.  If it were possible, I would choose not to be known at all.  It is my friend only that I care to see and recognise, though your framing and setting of the picture will very greatly enhance its value.—I am, my dear Mrs. Gaskell, yours very sincerely,

‘Ellen Nussey.’

The book was published in two volumes, under the title of The Life of Charlotte Brontë, in the spring of 1857.  At first all was well.  Mr. Brontë’s earliest acknowledgment of the book was one of approbation.  Sir James Shuttleworth expressed the hope that Mr. Nicholls would ‘rejoice that his wife would be known as a Christian heroine who could bear her cross with the firmness of a martyr saint.’  Canon p. 16Kingsley wrote a charming letter to Mrs. Gaskell, published in his Life, and more than once reprinted since.

‘Let me renew our long interrupted acquaintance,’ he writes from St. Leonards, under date May 14th, 1857, ‘by complimenting you on poor Miss Brontë’s Life.  You have had a delicate and a great work to do, and you have done it admirably.  Be sure that the book will do good.  It will shame literary people into some stronger belief that a simple, virtuous, practical home life is consistent with high imaginative genius; and it will shame, too, the prudery of a not over cleanly though carefully white-washed age, into believing that purity is now (as in all ages till now) quite compatible with the knowledge of evil.  I confess that the book has made me ashamed of myself.  Jane Eyre I hardly looked into, very seldom reading a work of fiction—yours, indeed, and Thackeray’s, are the only ones I care to open.  Shirley disgusted me at the opening, and I gave up the writer and her books with a notion that she was a person who liked coarseness.  How I misjudged her! and how thankful I am that I never put a word of my misconceptions into print, or recorded my misjudgments of one who is a whole heaven above me.

‘Well have you done your work, and given us the picture of a valiant woman made perfect by suffering.  I shall now read carefully and lovingly every word she has written, especially those poems, which ought not to have fallen dead as they did, and which seem to be (from a review in the current Fraser) of remarkable strength and purity.’

It was a short-lived triumph, however, and Mrs. Gaskell soon found herself, as she expressed it, ‘in a veritable hornet’s nest.’  Mr. Brontë, to begin with, did not care for the references to himself and the suggestion that he had treated his wife unkindly.  Mrs. Gaskell had associated him with numerous eccentricities and ebullitions of temper, which during his later years he always asserted, and p. 17undoubtedly with perfect truth, were, at the best, the fabrications of a dismissed servant.  Mr. Nicholls had also his grievance.  There was just a suspicion implied that he had not been quite the most sympathetic of husbands.  The suspicion was absolutely ill-founded, and arose from Mr. Nicholls’s intense shyness.  But neither Mr. Brontë nor Mr. Nicholls gave Mrs. Gaskell much trouble.  They, at any rate, were silent.  Trouble, however, came from many quarters.  Yorkshire people resented the air of patronage with which, as it seemed to them, a good Lancashire lady had taken their county in hand.  They were not quite the backward savages, they retorted, which some of Mrs. Gaskell’s descriptions in the beginning of her book would seem to suggest.  Between Lancashire and Yorkshire there is always a suspicion of jealousy.  It was intensified for the moment by these sombre pictures of ‘this lawless, yet not unkindly population.’ [17]  A son-in-law of Mr. Redhead wrote to deny the account of that clergyman’s association with Haworth.  ‘He gives another as true, in which I don’t see any great difference.’  Miss Martineau wrote sheet after sheet explanatory of her relations with Charlotte Brontë.  ‘Two separate householders in London each declares that the first interview between Miss Brontë and Miss Martineau took place at her house.’  In one passage Mrs. Gaskell had spoken of wasteful young servants, and the young servants in question came upon Mr. Brontë for the following testimonial:—

‘Haworth, August 17th, 1857.

‘I beg leave to state to all whom it may concern, that Nancy and Sarah Garrs, during the time they were in my service, were kind to my children, and honest, and not wasteful, but p. 18sufficiently careful in regard to food, and all other articles committed to their charge.

P. Brontë, A.B.,
‘Incumbent of Haworth, Yorkshire.’

Three whole pages were devoted to the dramatic recital of a scandal at Haworth, and this entirely disappears from the third edition.  A casual reference to a girl who had been seduced, and had found a friend in Miss Brontë, gave further trouble.  ‘I have altered the word “seduced” to “betrayed,”’ writes Mrs. Gaskell to Martha Brown, ‘and I hope that this will satisfy the unhappy girl’s friends.’  But all these were small matters compared with the Cowan Bridge controversy and the threatened legal proceedings over Branwell Brontë’s suggested love affairs.  Mrs. Gaskell defended the description in Jane Eyre of Cowan Bridge with peculiar vigour.  Mr. Carus Wilson, the Brocklehurst of Jane Eyre, and his friends were furious.  They threatened an action.  There were letters in the Times and letters in the Daily News.  Mr. Nicholls broke silence—the only time in the forty years that he has done so—with two admirable letters to the Halifax Guardian.  The Cowan Bridge controversy was a drawn battle, in spite of numerous and glowing testimonials to the virtues of Mr. Carus Wilson.  Most people who know anything of the average private schools of half a century ago are satisfied that Charlotte Brontë’s description was substantially correct.  ‘I want to show you many letters,’ writes Mrs. Gaskell, ‘most of them praising the character of our dear friend as she deserves, and from people whose opinion she would have cared for, such as the Duke of Argyll, Kingsley, Greig, etc.  Many abusing me.  I should think seven or eight of this kind from the Carus Wilson clique.’

The Branwell matter was more serious.  Here Mrs. Gaskell had, indeed, shown a singular recklessness.  The lady referred to by Branwell was Mrs. Robinson, the wife of the Rev. Edmund Robinson of Thorp Green, and afterwards Lady p. 19Scott.  Anne Brontë was governess in her family for two years, and Branwell tutor to the son for a few months.  Branwell, under the influence of opium, made certain statements about his relations with Mrs. Robinson which have been effectually disproved, although they were implicitly believed by the Brontë girls, who, womanlike, were naturally ready to regard a woman as the ruin of a beloved brother.  The recklessness of Mrs. Gaskell in accepting such inadequate testimony can be explained only on the assumption that she had a novelist’s satisfaction in the romance which the ‘bad woman’ theory supplied.  She wasted a considerable amount of rhetoric upon it.  ‘When the fatal attack came on,’ she says, ‘his pockets were found filled with old letters from the woman to whom he was attached.  He died! she lives still—in May Fair.  I see her name in county papers, as one of those who patronise the Christmas balls; and I hear of her in London drawing-rooms’—and so on.  There were no love-letters found in Branwell Brontë’s pockets. [19]  When Mrs. Gaskell’s husband came post-haste to Haworth to ask for proofs of Mrs. Robinson’s complicity in Branwell’s downfall, none were obtainable.  I am assured by Mr. Leslie Stephen that his father, Sir James Stephen, was employed at the time to make careful inquiry, and that he and other eminent lawyers came to the conclusion that it was one long tissue of lies or hallucinations.  The subject is sufficiently sordid, and indeed almost redundant in any biography of the Brontës; but it is of moment, because Charlotte Brontë and her sisters were so thoroughly persuaded that a woman was at the bottom of their brother’s ruin; and this belief Charlotte impressed upon all the friends who were nearest and dearest to her.  Her letters at the time of her brother’s p. 20death are full of censure of the supposed wickedness of another.  It was a cruel infamy that the word of this wretched boy should have been so powerful for mischief.  Here, at any rate, Mrs. Gaskell did not show the caution which a masculine biographer, less prone to take literally a man’s accounts of his amours, would undoubtedly have displayed.

Yet, when all is said, Mrs. Gaskell had done her work thoroughly and well.  Lockhart’s Scott and Froude’s Carlyle are examples of great biographies which called for abundant censure upon their publication; yet both these books will live as classics of their kind.  To be interesting, it is perhaps indispensable that the biographer should be indiscreet, and certainly the Branwell incident—a matter of two or three pages—is the only part of Mrs. Gaskell’s biography in which indiscretion becomes indefensible.  And for this she suffered cruelly.  ‘I did so try to tell the truth,’ she said to a friend, ‘and I believe now I hit as near to the truth as any one could do.’  ‘I weighed every line with my whole power and heart,’ she said on another occasion, ‘so that every line should go to its great purpose of making her known and valued, as one who had gone through such a terrible life with a brave and faithful heart.’  And that clearly Mrs. Gaskell succeeded in doing.  It is quite certain that Charlotte Brontë would not stand on so splendid a pedestal to-day but for the single-minded devotion of her accomplished biographer.

It has sometimes been implied that the portrait drawn by Mrs. Gaskell was far too sombre, that there are passages in Charlotte’s letters which show that ofttimes her heart was merry and her life sufficiently cheerful.  That there were long periods of gaiety for all the three sisters, surely no one ever doubted.  To few people, fortunately, is it given to have lives wholly without happiness.  And yet, when this is acknowledged, how can one say that the p. 21picture was too gloomy?  Taken as a whole, the life of Charlotte Brontë was among the saddest in literature.  At a miserable school, where she herself was unhappy, she saw her two elder sisters stricken down and carried home to die.  In her home was the narrowest poverty.  She had, in the years when that was most essential, no mother’s care; and perhaps there was a somewhat too rigid disciplinarian in the aunt who took the mother’s place.  Her second school brought her, indeed, two kind friends; but her shyness made that school-life in itself a prolonged tragedy.  Of the two experiences as a private governess I shall have more to say.  They were periods of torture to her sensitive nature.  The ambition of the three girls to start a school on their own account failed ignominiously.  The suppressed vitality of childhood and early womanhood made Charlotte unable to enter with sympathy and toleration into the life of a foreign city, and Brussels was for her a further disaster.  Then within two years, just as literary fame was bringing its consolation for the trials of the past, she saw her two beloved sisters taken from her.  And, finally, when at last a good man won her love, there were left to her only nine months of happy married life.  ‘I am not going to die.  We have been so happy.’  These words to her husband on her death-bed are not the least piteously sad in her tragic story.  That her life was a tragedy, was the opinion of the woman friend with whom on the intellectual side she had most in common.  Miss Mary Taylor wrote to Mrs. Gaskell the following letter from New Zealand upon receipt of the Life:—

‘Wellington, 30th July 1857.

‘My dear Mrs. Gaskell,—I am unaccountably in receipt by post of two vols. containing the Life of C. Brontë.  I have pleasure in attributing this compliment to you; I beg, therefore, to thank you for them.  The book is a perfect success, in giving a true picture of a melancholy life, and you have p. 22practically answered my puzzle as to how you would give an account of her, not being at liberty to give a true description of those around.  Though not so gloomy as the truth, it is perhaps as much so as people will accept without calling it exaggerated, and feeling the desire to doubt and contradict it.  I have seen two reviews of it.  One of them sums it up as “a life of poverty and self-suppression,” the other has nothing to the purpose at all.  Neither of them seems to think it a strange or wrong state of things that a woman of first-rate talents, industry, and integrity should live all her life in a walking nightmare of “poverty and self-suppression.”  I doubt whether any of them will.

‘It must upset most people’s notions of beauty to be told that the portrait at the beginning is that of an ugly woman. [22]  I do not altogether like the idea of publishing a flattered likeness.  I had rather the mouth and eyes had been nearer together, and shown the veritable square face and large disproportionate nose.

‘I had the impression that Cartwright’s mill was burnt in 1820 not in 1812.  You give much too favourable an account of the black-coated and Tory savages that kept the people down, and provoked excesses in those days.  Old Robertson said he “would wade to the knees in blood rather than the then state of things should be altered,”—a state including Corn law, Test law, and a host of other oppressions.

‘Once more I thank you for the book—the first copy, I believe, that arrived in New Zealand.—Sincerely yours,

‘Mary Taylor.’

And in another letter, written a little later (28th January 1858), Miss Mary Taylor writes to Miss Ellen Nussey in similar strain:—

‘Your account of Mrs. Gaskell’s book was very interesting,’ she says.  ‘She seems a hasty, impulsive person, and the p. 23needful drawing back after her warmth gives her an inconsistent look.  Yet I doubt not her book will be of great use.  You must be aware that many strange notions as to the kind of person Charlotte really was will be done away with by a knowledge of the true facts of her life.  I have heard imperfectly of farther printing on the subject.  As to the mutilated edition that is to come, I am sorry for it.  Libellous or not, the first edition was all true, and except the declamation all, in my opinion, useful to be published.  Of course I don’t know how far necessity may make Mrs. Gaskell give them up.  You know one dare not always say the world moves.’

We who do know the whole story in fullest detail will understand that it was desirable to ‘mutilate’ the book, and that, indeed, truth did in some measure require it.  But with these letters of Mary Taylor’s before us, let us not hear again that the story of Charlotte Brontë’s life was not, in its main features, accurately and adequately told by her gifted biographer.

Why then, I am naturally asked, add one further book to the Brontë biographical literature?  The reply is, I hope, sufficient.  Forty years have gone by, and they have been years of growing interest in the subject.  In the year 1895 ten thousand people visited the Brontë Museum at Haworth.  Interesting books have been written, notably Sir Wemyss Reid’s Monograph and Mr. Leyland’s Brontë Family, but they have gone out of print.  Many new facts have come to light, and many details, moreover, which were too trivial in 1857 are of sufficient importance to-day; and many facts which were rightly suppressed then may honestly and honourably be given to the public at an interval of nearly half a century.  Added to all this, fortune has been kind to me.

Some three or four years ago Miss Ellen Nussey placed in my hands a printed volume of some 400 pages, which bore no publisher’s name, but contained upon its title-page the statement that it was The Story of Charlotte Brontë’s Life, p. 24as told through her Letters.  These are the Letters—370 in number—which Miss Nussey had lent to Mrs. Gaskell and to Sir Wemyss Reid.  Of these letters Mrs. Gaskell published about 100, and Sir Wemyss Reid added as many more as he considered circumstances justified twenty years back.

It was explained to me that the volume had been privately printed under a misconception, and that only some dozen copies were extant.  Miss Nussey asked me if I would write something around what might remain of the unpublished letters, and if I saw my way to do anything which would add to the public appreciation of the friend who from early childhood until now has been the most absorbing interest of her life.  A careful study of the volume made it perfectly clear that there were still some letters which might with advantage be added to the Brontë story.  At the same time arose the possibility of a veto being placed upon their publication.  An examination of Charlotte Brontë’s will, which was proved at York by her husband in 1855, suggested an easy way out of the difficulty.  I made up my mind to try and see Mr. Nicholls.  I had heard of his disinclination to be in any way associated with the controversy which had gathered round his wife for all these years; but I wrote to him nevertheless, and received a cordial invitation to visit him in his Irish home.

It was exactly forty years to a day after Charlotte died—March 31st, 1895—when I alighted at the station in a quiet little town in the centre of Ireland, to receive the cordial handclasp of the man into whose keeping Charlotte Brontë had given her life.  It was one of many visits, and the beginning of an interesting correspondence.  Mr. Nicholls placed all the papers in his possession in my hands.  They were more varied and more abundant than I could possibly have anticipated.  They included MSS. of childhood, of which so much has been said, and stories of adult life, one fragment indeed being later than the Emma which p. 25appeared in the Cornhill Magazine for 1856, with a note by Thackeray.  Here were the letters Charlotte Brontë had written to her brother and to her sisters during her second sojourn in Brussels—to ‘Dear Branwell’ and ‘Dear E. J.,’ as she calls Emily—letters even to handle will give a thrill to the Brontë enthusiast.  Here also were the love-letters of Maria Branwell to her lover Patrick Brontë, which are referred to in Mrs. Gaskell’s biography, but have never hitherto been printed.

‘The four small scraps of Emily and Anne’s manuscript,’ writes Mr. Nicholls, ‘I found in the small box I send you; the others I found in the bottom of a cupboard tied up in a newspaper, where they had lain for nearly thirty years, and where, had it not been for your visit, they must have remained during my lifetime, and most likely afterwards have been destroyed.’

Some slight extracts from Brontë letters in Macmillan’s Magazine, signed ‘E. Balmer Williams,’ brought me into communication with a gifted daughter of Mr. W. S. Williams.  Mrs. Williams and her husband generously placed the whole series of these letters of Charlotte Brontë to their father at my disposal.  It was of some of these letters that Mrs. Gaskell wrote in enthusiastic terms when she had read them, and she was only permitted to see a few.  Then I have to thank Mr. Joshua Taylor, the nephew of Miss Mary Taylor, for permission to publish his aunt’s letters.  Mr. James Taylor, again, who wanted to marry Charlotte Brontë, and who died twenty years afterwards in Bombay, left behind him a bundle of letters which I found in the possession of a relative in the north of London. [25]  I discovered through a letter addressed to Miss Nussey that the ‘Brussels friend’ referred to by Mrs. Gaskell was a Miss Lætitia Wheelwright, and I determined to write to all the p. 26Wheelwrights in the London Directory.  My first effort succeeded, and the Miss Wheelwright kindly lent me all the letters that she had preserved.  It is scarcely possible that time will reveal many more unpublished letters from the author of Jane Eyre.  Several of those already in print are forgeries, and I have actually seen a letter addressed from Paris, a city which Miss Brontë never visited.  I have the assurance of Dr. Héger of Brussels that Miss Brontë’s correspondence with his father no longer exists.  In any case one may safely send forth this little book with the certainty that it is a fairly complete collection of Charlotte Brontë’s correspondence, and that it is altogether a valuable revelation of a singularly interesting personality.  Steps will be taken henceforth, it may be added, to vindicate Mr. Nicholls’s rights in whatever may still remain of his wife’s unpublished correspondence.

p. 27CHAPTER I: PATRICK BRONTË AND MARIA HIS WIFE

It would seem quite clear to any careful investigator that the Reverend Patrick Brontë, Incumbent of Haworth, and the father of three famous daughters, was a much maligned man.  We talk of the fierce light which beats upon a throne, but what is that compared to the fierce light which beats upon any man of some measure of individuality who is destined to live out his life in the quiet of a country village—in the very centre, as it were, of ‘personal talk’ and gossip not always kindly to the stranger within the gate?  The view of Mr. Brontë, presented by Mrs. Gaskell in the early editions of her biography of Charlotte Brontë, is that of a severe, ill-tempered, and distinctly disagreeable character.  It is the picture of a man who disliked the vanities of life so intensely, that the new shoes of his children and the silk dress of his wife were not spared by him in sudden gusts of passion.  A stern old ruffian, one is inclined to consider him.  His pistol-shooting rings picturesquely, but not agreeably, through Mrs. Gaskell’s memoirs.  It has been already explained in more than one quarter that this was not the real Patrick Brontë, and that much of the unfavourable gossip was due to the chatter of a dismissed servant, retailed to Mrs. Gaskell on one of her missions of inquiry in the neighbourhood.  The stories of the burnt shoes and the mutilated dress have been relegated to the realm of myth, and the pistol-shooting may now be acknowledged p. 28as a harmless pastime not more iniquitous than the golfing or angling of a latter-day clergyman.  It is certain, were the matter of much interest to-day, that Mr. Brontë was fond of the use of firearms.  The present Incumbent of Haworth will point out to you, on the old tower of Haworth Church, the marks of pistol bullets, which he is assured were made by Mr. Brontë.  I have myself handled both the gun and the pistol—this latter a very ornamental weapon, by the way, manufactured at Bradford—which Mr. Brontë possessed during the later years of his life.  From both he had obtained much innocent amusement; but his son-in-law, Mr. Nicholls, who, at the distance of forty years still cherishes a reverent and enthusiastic affection for old Mr. Brontë, informs me that the bullet marks upon Haworth Church were the irresponsible frolic of a rather juvenile curate—Mr. Smith.  All this is trivial enough in any case, and one turns very readily to more important factors in the life of the father of the Brontës.  Patrick Brontë was born at Ahaderg, County Down, in Ireland, on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1777.  He was one of the ten children of Hugh Brunty, farmer, and his nine brothers and sisters seem all of them to have spent their lives in their Irish home, to have married and been given in marriage, and to have gone to their graves in peace.  Patrick alone had ambition, and, one must add, the opportune friend, without whom ambition counts for little in the great struggle of life.  At sixteen he was a kind of village schoolmaster, or assistant schoolmaster, and at twenty-five, stirred thereto by the vicar of his parish, Mr. Tighe, he was on his way from Ireland to St. John’s College, Cambridge.  It was in 1802 that Patrick Brontë went to Cambridge, and entered his name in the college books.  There, indeed, we find the name, not of Patrick Brontë, but of Patrick Branty, [28] and this brings us to an p. 29interesting point as to the origin of the name.  In the register of his birth his name is entered, as are the births of his brothers and sisters, as ‘Brunty’ and ‘Bruntee’; and it can scarcely be doubted that, as Dr. Douglas Hyde has pointed out, the original name was O’Prunty. [29]  The Irish, at the beginning of the century, were well-nigh as primitive in some matters as were the English of a century earlier; and one is not surprised to see variations in the spelling of the Brontë name—it being in the case of his brothers and sisters occasionally spelt ‘Brontee.’  To me it is perfectly clear that for the change of name Lord Nelson was responsible, and that the dukedom of Brontë, which was conferred upon the great sailor in 1799, suggested the more ornamental surname.  There were no Irish Brontës in existence before Nelson became Duke of Brontë; but all Patrick’s brothers and sisters, with whom, it must be remembered, he was on terms of correspondence his whole life long, gradually, with a true Celtic sense of the picturesqueness of the thing, seized upon the more attractive surname.  For this theory there is, of course, not one scrap of evidence; we only know that the register of Patrick’s native parish gives us Brunty, and that his signature through his successive curacies is Brontë.

From Cambridge, after taking orders in 1806, Mr. Brontë moved to a curacy at Weatherfield in Essex; and Mr. Augustine Birrell has told us, with that singular literary charm of his, how the good-looking Irish curate made successful love to a young parishioner—Miss Mary Burder.  p. 30Mary Burder would have married him, it seems, but for an obdurate uncle and guardian.  She was spirited away from the neighbourhood, and the lovers never met again.  There are doubtful points in Mr. Birrell’s story.  Mary Burder, as the wife of a Nonconformist minister, died in 1866, in her seventy-seventh year.  This lady, from whom doubtless either directly or indirectly the tradition was obtained, may have amplified and exaggerated a very innocent flirtation.  One would like further evidence for the statement that when Mr. Brontë lost his wife in 1821 he asked his old sweetheart, Mary Burder, to become the mother of his six children, and that she answered ‘no’.  In any case, Mr. Brontë left Weatherfield in 1809 for a curacy at Dewsbury, and Dewsbury gossip also had much to say concerning the flirtations of its Irish curate.  His next curacy, however, which was obtained in 1811, by a removal to Hartshead, near Huddersfield, brought flirtation for Mr. Brontë to a speedy end.  In 1812, when thirty-three years of age, he married Miss Maria Branwell, of Penzance.  Miss Branwell had only a few months before left her Cornish home for a visit to an uncle in Yorkshire.  This uncle was a Mr. John Fennell, a clergyman of the Church of England, who had been a Methodist minister.  To Methodism, indeed, the Cornish Branwells would seem to have been devoted at one time or another, for I have seen a copy of the Imitation inscribed ‘M. Branwell, July 1807,’ with the following title-page:—

an extract of the christian’s pattern: or, a treatise on the imitation of christ.  written in latin by thomas à kempis.  abridged and published in english by john wesley, m.a., london.  printed at the conference office, north green, finsbury square.  g. story, agent.  sold by g. whitfield, city road.  1803.  price bound 1s.

p. 31The book was evidently brought by Mrs. Brontë from Penzance, and given by her to her husband or left among her effects.  The poor little woman had been in her grave for five or six years when it came into the hands of one of her daughters, as we learn from Charlotte’s hand-writing on the fly-leaf:—

‘C. Brontë’s book.  This book was given to me in July 1826.  It is not certainly known who is the author, but it is generally supposed that Thomas à Kempis is.  I saw a reward of £10,000 offered in the Leeds Mercury to any one who could find out for a certainty who is the author.’

The conjunction of the names of John Wesley, Maria Branwell, and Charlotte Brontë surely gives this little volume, ‘price bound 1s.,’ a singular interest!

But here I must refer to the letters which Maria Branwell wrote to her lover during the brief courtship.  Mrs. Gaskell, it will be remembered, makes but one extract from this correspondence, which was handed to her by Mr. Brontë as part of the material for her memoir.  Long years before, the little packet had been taken from Mr. Brontë’s desk, for we find Charlotte writing to a friend on February 16th, 1850:—

‘A few days since, a little incident happened which curiously touched me.  Papa put into my hands a little packet of letters and papers, telling me that they were mamma’s, and that I might read them.  I did read them, in a frame of mind I cannot describe.  The papers were yellow with time, all having been written before I was born.  It was strange now to peruse, for the first time, the records of a mind whence my own sprang; and most strange, and at once sad and sweet, to find that mind of a truly fine, pure, and elevated order.  They were written to papa before they were married.  There is a rectitude, a refinement, a constancy, a modesty, a sense, a gentleness about them indescribable.  I wish she had lived, and that I had known her.’

p. 32Yet another forty years or so and the little packet is in my possession.  Handling, with a full sense of their sacredness, these letters, written more than eighty years ago by a good woman to her lover, one is tempted to hope that there is no breach of the privacy which should, even in our day, guide certain sides of life, in publishing the correspondence in its completeness.  With the letters I find a little MS., which is also of pathetic interest.  It is entitled ‘The Advantages of Poverty in Religious Concerns,’ and it is endorsed in the handwriting of Mr. Brontë, written, doubtless, many years afterwards:—

‘The above was written by my dear wife, and is for insertion in one of the periodical publications.  Keep it as a memorial of her.’

There is no reason to suppose that the MS. was ever published; there is no reason why any editor should have wished to publish it.  It abounds in the obvious.  At the same time, one notes that from both father and mother alike Charlotte Brontë and her sisters inherited some measure of the literary faculty.  It is nothing to say that not one line of the father’s or mother’s would have been preserved had it not been for their gifted children.  It is sufficient that the zest for writing was there, and that the intense passion for handling a pen, which seems to have been singularly strong in Charlotte Brontë, must have come to a great extent from a similar passion alike in father and mother.  Mr. Brontë, indeed, may be counted a prolific author.  He published, in all, four books, three pamphlets, and two sermons.  Of his books, two were in verse and two in prose.  Cottage Poems was published in 1811; The Rural Minstrel in 1812, the year of his marriage; The Cottage in the Wood in 1815; and The Maid of Killarney in 1818.  After his wife’s death he published no more books.  Reading over these old-fashioned volumes now, one admits that they possess but little distinction.  It has been pointed out, indeed, that p. 33one of the strongest lines in Jane Eyre—‘To the finest fibre of my nature, sir.’—is culled from Mr. Brontë’s verse.  It is the one line of his that will live.  Like his daughter Charlotte, Mr. Brontë is more interesting in his prose than in his poetry.  The Cottage in the Wood; or, the Art of Becoming Rich and Happy, is a kind of religious novel—a spiritual Pamela, in which the reprobate pursuer of an innocent girl ultimately becomes converted and marries her.  The Maid of Killarney; or, Albion and Flora is more interesting.  Under the guise of a story it has something to say on many questions of importance.  We know now why Charlotte never learnt to dance until she went to Brussels, and why children’s games were unknown to her, for here are many mild diatribes against dancing and card-playing.  The British Constitution and the British and Foreign Bible Society receive a considerable amount of criticism.  But in spite of this didactic weakness there are one or two pieces of really picturesque writing, notably a description of an Irish wake, and a forcible account of the defence of a house against some Whiteboys.  It is true enough that the books are merely of interest to collectors and that they live only by virtue of Patrick Brontë’s remarkable children.  But many a prolific writer of the day passes muster as a genius among his contemporaries upon as small a talent; and Mr. Brontë does not seem to have given himself any airs as an author.  Thirty years were to elapse before there were to be any more books from this family of writers; but Jane Eyre owes something, we may be sure, to The Maid of Killarney.

Mr. Brontë, as I have said, married Maria Branwell in 1812.  She was in her twenty-ninth year, and was one of five children—one son and four daughters—the father of whom, Mr. Thomas Branwell, had died in 1809.  By a curious coincidence, another sister, Charlotte, was married in Penzance on the same day—the 18th of December 1812. [33]  p. 34Before me are a bundle of samplers, worked by three of these Branwell sisters.  Maria Branwell ‘ended her sampler’ April the 15th, 1791, and it is inscribed with the text, Flee from sin as from a serpent, for if thou comest too near to it, it will bite thee.  The teeth thereof are as the teeth of a lion to slay the souls of men.  Another sampler is by Elizabeth Branwell; another by Margaret, and another by Anne.  These, some miniatures, and the book and papers to which I have referred, are all that remain to us as a memento of Mrs. Brontë, apart from the children that she bore to her husband.  The miniatures, which are in the possession of Miss Branwell, of Penzance, are of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Branwell—Charlotte Brontë’s maternal grandfather and grandmother—and of Mrs. Brontë and her sister Elizabeth Branwell as children.

To return, however, to our bundle of love-letters.  Comment is needless, if indeed comment or elucidation were possible at this distance of time.

TO REV. PATRICK BRONTË, A.B., Hartshead

‘Wood House Grove, August 26th, 1812.

‘My dear Friend,—This address is sufficient to convince you p. 35that I not only permit, but approve of yours to me—I do indeed consider you as my friend; yet, when I consider how short a time I have had the pleasure of knowing you, I start at my own rashness, my heart fails, and did I not think that you would be disappointed and grieved at it, I believe I should be ready to spare myself the task of writing.  Do not think that I am so wavering as to repent of what I have already said.  No, believe me, this will never be the case, unless you give me cause for it.  You need not fear that you have been mistaken in my character.  If I know anything of myself, I am incapable of making an ungenerous return to the smallest degree of kindness, much less to you whose attentions and conduct have been so particularly obliging.  I will frankly confess that your behaviour and what I have seen and heard of your character has excited my warmest esteem and regard, and be assured you shall never have cause to repent of any confidence you may think proper to place in me, and that it will always be my endeavour to deserve the good opinion which you have formed, although human weakness may in some instances cause me to fall short.  In giving you these assurances I do not depend upon my own strength, but I look to Him who has been my unerring guide through life, and in whose continued protection and assistance I confidently trust.

‘I thought on you much on Sunday, and feared you would not escape the rain.  I hope you do not feel any bad effects from it?  My cousin wrote you on Monday and expects this afternoon to be favoured with an answer.  Your letter has caused me some foolish embarrassment, tho’ in pity to my feelings they have been very sparing of their raillery.

‘I will now candidly answer your questions.  The politeness of others can never make me forget your kind attentions, neither can I walk our accustomed rounds without thinking on you, and, why should I be ashamed to add, wishing for your presence.  If you knew what were my feelings whilst writing this you would pity me.  I wish to write the truth and give you satisfaction, yet fear to go too far, and exceed the bounds of propriety.  But whatever I may say or write I will never deceive you, or exceed the truth.  If you think I have not placed the utmost confidence in p. 36you, consider my situation, and ask yourself if I have not confided in you sufficiently, perhaps too much.  I am very sorry that you will not have this till after to-morrow, but it was out of my power to write sooner.  I rely on your goodness to pardon everything in this which may appear either too free or too stiff; and beg that you will consider me as a warm and faithful friend.

‘My uncle, aunt, and cousin unite in kind regards.

‘I must now conclude with again declaring myself to be yours sincerely,

‘Maria Branwell.’

TO REV. PATRICK BRONTË, A.B, Hartshead

‘Wood House Grove, September 5th, 1812.

My dearest Friend,—I have just received your affectionate and very welcome letter, and although I shall not be able to send this until Monday, yet I cannot deny myself the pleasure of writing a few lines this evening, no longer considering it a task, but a pleasure, next to that of reading yours.  I had the pleasure of hearing from Mr. Fennell, who was at Bradford on Thursday afternoon, that you had rested there all night.  Had you proceeded, I am sure the walk would have been too much for you; such excessive fatigue, often repeated, must injure the strongest constitution.  I am rejoiced to find that our forebodings were without cause.  I had yesterday a letter from a very dear friend of mine, and had the satisfaction to learn by it that all at home are well.  I feel with you the unspeakable obligations I am under to a merciful Providence—my heart swells with gratitude, and I feel an earnest desire that I may be enabled to make some suitable return to the Author of all my blessings.  In general, I think I am enabled to cast my care upon Him, and then I experience a calm and peaceful serenity of mind which few things can destroy.  In all my addresses to the throne of grace I never ask a blessing for myself but I beg the same for you, and considering the important station which you are called to fill, my prayers are proportionately fervent that you may be favoured with all the gifts and graces requisite for such calling.  O my dear friend, let us pray much that we may live lives holy and useful to each other and all around us!

p. 37‘Monday morn.—My cousin and I were yesterday at Coverley church, where we heard Mr. Watman preach a very excellent sermon from “learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart.”  He displayed the character of our Saviour in a most affecting and amiable light.  I scarcely ever felt more charmed with his excellencies, more grateful for his condescension, or more abased at my own unworthiness; but I lament that my heart is so little retentive of those pleasing and profitable impressions.

‘I pitied you in your solitude, and felt sorry that it was not in my power to enliven it.  Have you not been too hasty in informing your friends of a certain event?  Why did you not leave them to guess a little longer?  I shrink from the idea of its being known to every body.  I do, indeed, sometimes think of you, but I will not say how often, lest I raise your vanity; and we sometimes talk of you and the doctor.  But I believe I should seldom mention your name myself were it not now and then introduced by my cousin.  I have never mentioned a word of what is past to any body.  Had I thought this necessary I should have requested you to do it.  But I think there is no need, as by some means or other they seem to have a pretty correct notion how matters stand betwixt us; and as their hints, etc., meet with no contradiction from me, my silence passes for confirmation.  Mr. Fennell has not neglected to give me some serious and encouraging advice, and my aunt takes frequent opportunities of dropping little sentences which I may turn to some advantage.  I have long had reason to know that the present state of things would give pleasure to all parties.  Your ludicrous account of the scene at the Hermitage was highly diverting, we laughed heartily at it; but I fear it will not produce all that compassion in Miss Fennell’s breast which you seem to wish.  I will now tell you what I was thinking about and doing at the time you mention.  I was then toiling up the hill with Jane and Mrs. Clapham to take our tea at Mr. Tatham’s, thinking on the evening when I first took the same walk with you, and on the change which had taken place in my circumstances and views since then—not wholly without a wish that I had your arm to assist me, and your conversation to shorten the walk.  Indeed, all our walks p. 38have now an insipidity in them which I never thought they would have possessed.  When I work, if I wish to get forward I may be glad that you are at a distance.  Jane begs me to assure you of her kind regards.  Mr. Morgan is expected to be here this evening.  I must assume a bold and steady countenance to meet his attacks!

‘I have now written a pretty long letter without reserve or caution, and if all the sentiments of my heart are not laid open to you, believe me it is not because I wish them to be concealed, for I hope there is nothing there that would give you pain or displeasure.  My most sincere and earnest wishes are for your happiness and welfare, for this includes my own.  Pray much for me that I may be made a blessing and not a hindrance to you.  Let me not interrupt your studies nor intrude on that time which ought to be dedicated to better purposes.  Forgive my freedom, my dearest friend, and rest assured that you are and ever will be dear to

Maria Branwell.

‘Write very soon.’

TO REV. PATRICK BRONTË, A.B., Hartshead

‘Wood House Grove, September 11th, 1812.

‘My dearest Friend,—Having spent the day yesterday at Miry Shay, a place near Bradford, I had not got your letter till my return in the evening, and consequently have only a short time this morning to write if I send it by this post.  You surely do not think you trouble me by writing?  No, I think I may venture to say if such were your opinion you would trouble me no more.  Be assured, your letters are and I hope always will be received with extreme pleasure and read with delight.  May our Gracious Father mercifully grant the fulfilment of your prayers!  Whilst we depend entirely on Him for happiness, and receive each other and all our blessings as from His hands, what can harm us or make us miserable?  Nothing temporal or spiritual.

‘Jane had a note from Mr. Morgan last evening, and she desires me to tell you that the Methodists’ service in church hours is to commence next Sunday week.  You may expect frowns and hard words from her when you make your appearance here p. 39again, for, if you recollect, she gave you a note to carry to the Doctor, and he has never received it.  What have you done with it?  If you can give a good account of it you may come to see us as soon as you please and be sure of a hearty welcome from all parties.  Next Wednesday we have some thoughts, if the weather be fine, of going to Kirkstall Abbey once more, and I suppose your presence will not make the walk less agreeable to any of us.

‘The old man is come and waits for my letter.  In expectation of seeing you on Monday or Tuesday next,—I remain, yours faithfully and affectionately,

‘M. B.’

TO REV. PATRICK BRONTË, A.B., Hartshead

‘Wood House Grove, September 18th, 1812.

‘How readily do I comply with my dear Mr. B’s request!  You see, you have only to express your wishes and as far as my power extends I hesitate not to fulfil them.  My heart tells me that it will always be my pride and pleasure to contribute to your happiness, nor do I fear that this will ever be inconsistent with my duty as a Christian.  My esteem for you and my confidence in you is so great, that I firmly believe you will never exact anything from me which I could not conscientiously perform.  I shall in future look to you for assistance and instruction whenever I may need them, and hope you will never withhold from me any advice or caution you may see necessary.

[‘For some years I have been perfectly my own mistress, subject to no control whatever—so far from it, that my sisters who are many years older than myself, and even my dear mother, used to consult me in every case of importance, and scarcely ever doubted the propriety of my opinions and actions.  Perhaps you will be ready to accuse me of vanity in mentioning this, but you must consider that I do not boast of it, I have many times felt it a disadvantage; and although, I thank God, it never led me into error, yet in circumstances of perplexity and doubt, I have deeply felt the want of a guide and instructor.] [39]

‘At such times I have seen and felt the necessity of supernatural p. 40aid, and by fervent applications to a throne of grace I have experienced that my heavenly Father is able and willing to supply the place of every earthly friend.  I shall now no longer feel this want, this sense of helpless weakness, for I believe a kind Providence has intended that I shall find in you every earthly friend united; nor do I fear to trust myself under your protection, or shrink from your control.  It is pleasant to be subject to those we love, especially when they never exert their authority but for the good of the subject.  How few would write in this way!  But I do not fear that you will make a bad use of it.  You tell me to write my thoughts, and thus as they occur I freely let my pen run away with them.

‘Sat. morn.—I do not know whether you dare show your face here again or not after the blunder you have committed.  When we got to the house on Thursday evening, even before we were within the doors, we found that Mr. and Mrs. Bedford had been there, and that they had requested you to mention their intention of coming—a single hint of which you never gave!  Poor I too came in for a share in the hard words which were bestowed upon you, for they all agreed that I was the cause of it.  Mr. Fennell said you were certainly mazed, and talked of sending you to York, etc.  And even I begin to think that this, together with the note, bears some marks of insanity!  However, I shall suspend my judgment until I hear what excuse you can make for yourself, I suppose you will be quite ready to make one of some kind or another.

‘Yesterday I performed a difficult and yet a pleasing task in writing to my sisters.  I thought I never should accomplish the end for which the letter was designed; but after a good deal of perambulation I gave them to understand the nature of my engagement with you, with the motives and inducements which led me to form such an engagement, and that in consequence of it I should not see them again so soon as I had intended.  I concluded by expressing a hope that they would not be less pleased with the information than were my friends here.  I think they will not suspect me to have made a wrong step, their partiality for me is so great.  And their affection for me will p. 41lead them to rejoice in my welfare, even though it should diminish somewhat of their own.  I shall think the time tedious till I hear from you, and must beg you will write as soon as possible.  Pardon me, my dear friend, if I again caution you against giving way to a weakness of which I have heard you complain.  When you find your heart oppressed and your thoughts too much engrossed by one subject, let prayer be your refuge—this you no doubt know by experience to be a sure remedy, and a relief from every care and error.  Oh, that we had more of the spirit of prayer!  I feel that I need it much.

‘Breakfast-time is near, I must bid you farewell for the time, but rest assured you will always share in the prayers and heart of your own

Maria.

‘Mr. Fennell has crossed my letter to my sisters.  With his usual goodness he has supplied my deficiencies, and spoken of me in terms of commendation of which I wish I were more worthy.  Your character he has likewise displayed in the most favourable light; and I am sure they will not fail to love and esteem you though unknown.

‘All here unite in kind regards.  Adieu.’

TO REV. PATRICK BRONTË A.B., Hartshead

‘Wood House Grove, September 23rd, 1812.

‘My dearest Friend,—Accept of my warmest thanks for your kind affectionate letter, in which you have rated mine so highly that I really blush to read my own praises.  Pray that God would enable me to deserve all the kindness you manifest towards me, and to act consistently with the good opinion you entertain of me—then I shall indeed be a helpmeet for you, and to be this shall at all times be the care and study of my future life.  We have had to-day a large party of the Bradford folks—the Rands, Fawcets, Dobsons, etc.  My thoughts often strayed from the company, and I would have gladly left them to follow my present employment.  To write to and receive letters from my friends were always among my chief enjoyments, but none ever gave me so much pleasure as those which I receive from and p. 42write to my newly adopted friend.  I am by no means sorry you have given up all thought of the house you mentioned.  With my cousin’s help I have made known your plans to my uncle and aunt.  Mr. Fennell immediately coincided with that which respects your present abode, and observed that it had occurred to him before, but that he had not had an opportunity of mentioning it to you.  My aunt did not fall in with it so readily, but her objections did not appear to me to be very weighty.  For my own part, I feel all the force of your arguments in favour of it, and the objections are so trifling that they can scarcely be called objections.  My cousin is of the same opinion.  Indeed, you have such a method of considering and digesting a plan before you make it known to your friends, that you run very little risque of incurring their disapprobations, or of having your schemes frustrated.  I greatly admire your talents this way—may they never be perverted by being used in a bad cause!  And whilst they are exerted for good purposes, may they prove irresistible!  If I may judge from your letter, this middle scheme is what would please you best, so that if there should arise no new objection to it, perhaps it will prove the best you can adopt.  However, there is yet sufficient time to consider it further.  I trust in this and every other circumstance you will be guided by the wisdom that cometh from above—a portion of which I doubt not has guided you hitherto.  A belief of this, added to the complete satisfaction with which I read your reasonings on the subject, made me a ready convert to your opinions.  I hope nothing will occur to induce you to change your intention of spending the next week at Bradford.  Depend on it you shall have letter for letter; but may we not hope to see you here during that time, surely you will not think the way more tedious than usual?  I have not heard any particulars respecting the church since you were at Bradford.  Mr. Rawson is now there, but Mr. Hardy and his brother are absent, and I understand nothing decisive can be accomplished without them.  Jane expects to hear something more to-morrow.  Perhaps ere this reaches you, you will have received some intelligence respecting it from Mr. Morgan.  If you have no other apology to make for your blunders p. 43than that which you have given me, you must not expect to be excused, for I have not mentioned it to any one, so that however it may clear your character in my opinion it is not likely to influence any other person.  Little, very little, will induce me to cover your faults with a veil of charity.  I already feel a kind of participation in all that concerns you.  All praises and censures bestowed on you must equally affect me.  Your joys and sorrows must be mine.  Thus shall the one be increased and the other diminished.  While this is the case we shall, I hope, always find “life’s cares” to be “comforts.”  And may we feel every trial and distress, for such must be our lot at times, bind us nearer to God and to each other!  My heart earnestly joins in your comprehensive prayers.  I trust they will unitedly ascend to a throne of grace, and through the Redeemer’s merits procure for us peace and happiness here and a life of eternal felicity hereafter.  Oh, what sacred pleasure there is in the idea of spending an eternity together in perfect and uninterrupted bliss!  This should encourage us to the utmost exertion and fortitude.  But whilst I write, my own words condemn me—I am ashamed of my own indolence and backwardness to duty.  May I be more careful, watchful, and active than I have ever yet been!

‘My uncle, aunt, and Jane request me to send their kind regards, and they will be happy to see you any time next week whenever you can conveniently come down from Bradford.  Let me hear from you soon—I shall expect a letter on Monday.  Farewell, my dearest friend.  That you may be happy in yourself and very useful to all around you is the daily earnest prayer of yours truly,

‘Maria Branwell.’

TO REV. PATRICK BRONTË, A.B., Hartshead

‘Wood House Grove, October 3rd, 1812.

‘How could my dear friend so cruelly disappoint me?  Had he known how much I had set my heart on having a letter this afternoon, and how greatly I felt the disappointment when the bag arrived and I found there was nothing for me, I am sure he would not have permitted a little matter to hinder him.  But whatever was the reason of your not writing, I cannot p. 44believe it to have been neglect or unkindness, therefore I do not in the least blame you, I only beg that in future you will judge of my feelings by your own, and if possible never let me expect a letter without receiving one.  You know in my last which I sent you at Bradford I said it would not be in my power to write the next day, but begged I might be favoured with hearing from you on Saturday, and you will not wonder that I hoped you would have complied with this request.  It has just occurred to my mind that it is possible this note was not received; if so, you have felt disappointed likewise; but I think this is not very probable, as the old man is particularly careful, and I never heard of his losing anything committed to his care.  The note which I allude to was written on Thursday morning, and you should have received it before you left Bradford.  I forget what its contents were, but I know it was written in haste and concluded abruptly.  Mr. Fennell talks of visiting Mr. Morgan to-morrow.  I cannot lose the opportunity of sending this to the office by him as you will then have it a day sooner, and if you have been daily expecting to hear from me, twenty-four hours are of some importance.  I really am concerned to find that this, what many would deem trifling incident, has so much disturbed my mind.  I fear I should not have slept in peace to-night if I had been deprived of this opportunity of relieving my mind by scribbling to you, and now I lament that you cannot possibly receive this till Monday.  May I hope that there is now some intelligence on the way to me? or must my patience be tried till I see you on Wednesday?  But what nonsense am I writing?  Surely after this you can have no doubt that you possess all my heart.  Two months ago I could not possibly have believed that you would ever engross so much of my thoughts and affections, and far less could I have thought that I should be so forward as to tell you so.  I believe I must forbid you to come here again unless you can assure me that you will not steal any more of my regard.  Enough of this; I must bring my pen to order, for if I were to suffer myself to revise what I have written I should be tempted to throw it in the fire, but I have determined that p. 45you shall see my whole heart.  I have not yet informed you that I received your serio-comic note on Thursday afternoon, for which accept my thanks.

‘My cousin desires me to say that she expects a long poem on her birthday, when she attains the important age of twenty-one.  Mr. Fennell joins with us in requesting that you will not fail to be here on Wednesday, as it is decided that on Thursday we are to go to the Abbey if the weather, etc., permits.

‘Sunday morning.—I am not sure if I do right in adding a few lines to-day, but knowing that it will give you pleasure I wish to finish that you may have it to-morrow.  I will just say that if my feeble prayers can aught avail, you will find your labours this day both pleasant and profitable, as they concern your own soul and the souls of those to whom you preach.  I trust in your hours of retirement you will not forget to pray for me.  I assure you I need every assistance to help me forward; I feel that my heart is more ready to attach itself to earth than heaven.  I sometimes think there never was a mind so dull and inactive as mine is with regard to spiritual things.

‘I must not forget to thank you for the pamphlets and tracts which you sent us from Bradford.  I hope we shall make good use of them.  I must now take my leave.  I believe I need scarcely assure you that I am yours truly and very affectionately,

‘Maria Branwell.’

TO REV. PATRICK BRONTË, A.B., Hartshead

‘Wood House Grove, October 21st 1812.

‘With the sincerest pleasure do I retire from company to converse with him whom I love beyond all others.  Could my beloved friend see my heart he would then be convinced that the affection I bear him is not at all inferior to that which he feels for me—indeed I sometimes think that in truth and constancy it excels.  But do not think from this that I entertain any suspicions of your sincerity—no, I firmly believe you to be sincere and generous, and doubt not in the least that you feel all you express.  In return, I entreat that you p. 46will do me the justice to believe that you have not only a very large portion of my affection and esteem, but all that I am capable of feeling, and from henceforth measure my feelings by your own.  Unless my love for you were very great how could I so contentedly give up my home and all my friends—a home I loved so much that I have often thought nothing could bribe me to renounce it for any great length of time together, and friends with whom I have been so long accustomed to share all the vicissitudes of joy and sorrow?  Yet these have lost their weight, and though I cannot always think of them without a sigh, yet the anticipation of sharing with you all the pleasures and pains, the cares and anxieties of life, of contributing to your comfort and becoming the companion of your pilgrimage, is more delightful to me than any other prospect which this world can possibly present.  I expected to have heard from you on Saturday last, and can scarcely refrain from thinking you unkind to keep me in suspense two whole days longer than was necessary, but it is well that my patience should be sometimes tried, or I might entirely lose it, and this would be a loss indeed!  Lately I have experienced a considerable increase of hopes and fears, which tend to destroy the calm uniformity of my life.  These are not unwelcome, as they enable me to discover more of the evils and errors of my heart, and discovering them I hope through grace to be enabled to correct and amend them.  I am sorry to say that my cousin has had a very serious cold, but to-day I think she is better; her cough seems less, and I hope we shall be able to come to Bradford on Saturday afternoon, where we intend to stop till Tuesday.  You may be sure we shall not soon think of taking such another journey as the last.  I look forward with pleasure to Monday, when I hope to meet with you, for as we are no longer twain separation is painful, and to meet must ever be attended with joy.

‘Thursday morning.—I intended to have finished this before breakfast, but unfortunately slept an hour too long.  I am every moment in expectation of the old man’s arrival.  I hope my cousin is still better to-day; she requests me to say that she is p. 47much obliged to you for your kind inquiries and the concern you express for her recovery.  I take all possible care of her, but yesterday she was naughty enough to venture into the yard without her bonnet!  As you do not say anything of going to Leeds I conclude you have not been.  We shall most probably hear from the Dr. this afternoon.  I am much pleased to hear of his success at Bierly!  O that you may both be zealous and successful in your efforts for the salvation of souls, and may your own lives be holy, and your hearts greatly blessed while you are engaged in administering to the good of others!  I should have been very glad to have had it in my power to lessen your fatigue and cheer your spirits by my exertions on Monday last.  I will hope that this pleasure is still reserved for me.  In general, I feel a calm confidence in the providential care and continued mercy of God, and when I consider his past deliverances and past favours I am led to wonder and adore.  A sense of my small returns of love and gratitude to him often abases me and makes me think I am little better than those who profess no religion.  Pray for me, my dear friend, and rest assured that you possess a very very large portion of the prayers, thoughts, and heart of yours truly,

‘M. Branwell.

‘Mr. Fennell requests Mr. Bedford to call on the man who has had orders to make blankets for the Grove and desire him to send them as soon as possible.  Mr. Fennell will be greatly obliged to Mr. Bedford if he will take this trouble.’

TO REV. PATRICK BRONTË, A.B., Hartshead

‘Wood House Grove, November 18th, 1812.

‘My dear saucy Pat,—Now don’t you think you deserve this epithet far more than I do that which you have given me?  I really know not what to make of the beginning of your last; the winds, waves, and rocks almost stunned me.  I thought you were giving me the account of some terrible dream, or that you had had a presentiment of the fate of my poor box, having no idea that your lively imagination could make so much of the slight reproof conveyed in my last.  What will you say when you get a real, downright scolding?  Since you show such a readiness to atone p. 48for your offences after receiving a mild rebuke, I am inclined to hope you will seldom deserve a severe one.  I accept with pleasure your atonement, and send you a free and full forgiveness.  But I cannot allow that your affection is more deeply rooted than mine.  However, we will dispute no more about this, but rather embrace every opportunity to prove its sincerity and strength by acting in every respect as friends and fellow-pilgrims travelling the same road, actuated by the same motives, and having in view the same end.  I think if our lives are spared twenty years hence I shall then pray for you with the same, if not greater, fervour and delight that I do now.  I am pleased that you are so fully convinced of my candour, for to know that you suspected me of a deficiency in this virtue would grieve and mortify me beyond expression.  I do not derive any merit from the possession of it, for in me it is constitutional.  Yet I think where it is possessed it will rarely exist alone, and where it is wanted there is reason to doubt the existence of almost every other virtue.  As to the other qualities which your partiality attributes to me, although I rejoice to know that I stand so high in your good opinion, yet I blush to think in how small a degree I possess them.  But it shall be the pleasing study of my future life to gain such an increase of grace and wisdom as shall enable me to act up to your highest expectations and prove to you a helpmeet.  I firmly believe the Almighty has set us apart for each other; may we, by earnest, frequent prayer, and every possible exertion, endeavour to fulfil His will in all things!  I do not, cannot, doubt your love, and here I freely declare I love you above all the world besides.  I feel very, very grateful to the great Author of all our mercies for His unspeakable love and condescension towards us, and desire “to show forth my gratitude not only with my lips, but by my life and conversation.”  I indulge a hope that our mutual prayers will be answered, and that our intimacy will tend much to promote our temporal and eternal interest.

[‘I suppose you never expected to be much the richer for me, but I am sorry to inform you that I am still poorer than I p. 49thought myself.  I mentioned having sent for my books, clothes, etc.  On Saturday evening about the time you were writing the description of your imaginary shipwreck, I was reading and feeling the effects of a real one, having then received a letter from my sister giving me an account of the vessel in which she had sent my box being stranded on the coast of Devonshire, in consequence of which the box was dashed to pieces with the violence of the sea, and all my little property, with the exception of a very few articles, swallowed up in the mighty deep.  If this should not prove the prelude to something worse, I shall think little of it, as it is the first disastrous circumstance which has occurred since I left my home], [49] and having been so highly favoured it would be highly ungrateful in me were I to suffer this to dwell much on my mind.

‘Mr. Morgan was here yesterday, indeed he only left this morning.  He mentioned having written to invite you to Bierly on Sunday next, and if you complied with his request it is likely that we shall see you both here on Sunday evening.  As we intend going to Leeds next week, we should be happy if you would accompany us on Monday or Tuesday.  I mention this by desire of Miss Fennell, who begs to be remembered affectionately to you.  Notwithstanding Mr. Fennell’s complaints and threats, I doubt not but he will give you a cordial reception whenever you think fit to make your appearance at the Grove.  Which you may likewise be assured of receiving from your ever truly affectionate,

Maria.

‘Both the doctor and his lady very much wish to know what kind of address we make use of in our letters to each other.  I think they would scarcely hit on this!!’

TO REV. PATRICK BRONTË, A.B., Hartshead

‘Wood House Grove, December 5th, 1812.

‘My dearest Friend,—So you thought that perhaps I might expect to hear from you.  As the case was so doubtful, and you p. 50were in such great haste, you might as well have deferred writing a few days longer, for you seem to suppose it is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether I hear from you or not.  I believe I once requested you to judge of my feelings by your own—am I to think that you are thus indifferent?  I feel very unwilling to entertain such an opinion, and am grieved that you should suspect me of such a cold, heartless, attachment.  But I am too serious on the subject; I only meant to rally you a little on the beginning of your last, and to tell you that I fancied there was a coolness in it which none of your former letters had contained.  If this fancy was groundless, forgive me for having indulged it, and let it serve to convince you of the sincerity and warmth of my affection.  Real love is ever apt to suspect that it meets not with an equal return; you must not wonder then that my fears are sometimes excited.  My pride cannot bear the idea of a diminution of your attachment, or to think that it is stronger on my side than on yours.  But I must not permit my pen so fully to disclose the feelings of my heart, nor will I tell you whether I am pleased or not at the thought of seeing you on the appointed day.

‘Miss Fennell desires her kind regards, and, with her father, is extremely obliged to you for the trouble you have taken about the carpet, and has no doubt but it will give full satisfaction.  They think there will be no occasion for the green cloth.

‘We intend to set about making the cakes here next week, but as the fifteen or twenty persons whom you mention live probably somewhere in your neighbourhood, I think it will be most convenient for Mrs. B. to make a small one for the purpose of distributing there, which will save us the difficulty of sending so far.

‘You may depend on my learning my lessons as rapidly as they are given me.  I am already tolerably perfect in the A B C, etc.  I am much obliged to you for the pretty little hymn which I have already got by heart, but cannot promise to sing it scientifically, though I will endeavour to gain a little more assurance.

p. 51‘Since I began this Jane put into my hands Lord Lyttelton’s Advice to a Lady.  When I read those lines, “Be never cool reserve with passion joined, with caution choose, but then be fondly kind, etc.” my heart smote me for having in some cases used too much reserve towards you.  Do you think you have any cause to complain of me?  If you do, let me know it.  For were it in my power to prevent it, I would in no instance occasion you the least pain or uneasiness.  I am certain no one ever loved you with an affection more pure, constant, tender, and ardent than that which I feel.  Surely this is not saying too much; it is the truth, and I trust you are worthy to know it.  I long to improve in every religious and moral quality, that I may be a help, and if possible an ornament to you.  Oh let us pray much for wisdom and grace to fill our appointed stations with propriety, that we may enjoy satisfaction in our own souls, edify others, and bring glory to the name of Him who has so wonderfully preserved, blessed, and brought us together.

‘If there is anything in the commencement of this which looks like pettishness, forgive it; my mind is now completely divested of every feeling of the kind, although I own I am sometimes too apt to be overcome by this disposition.

‘Let me have the pleasure of hearing from you again as soon as convenient.  This writing is uncommonly bad, but I too am in haste.

‘Adieu, my dearest.—I am your affectionate and sincere

‘Maria.’

Mr. Brontë was at Hartshead, where he married, for five years, and there his two eldest children, Maria and Elizabeth, were born.  He then moved to Thornton, near Bradford, where Charlotte was born on the 21st of April 1816, Branwell in 1817, Emily in 1818, and Anne in 1819.  In 1820 the family removed to the parsonage of Haworth, and in 1821 the poor mother was dead.  A year or two later Miss Elizabeth Branwell came from Penzance to act as a mother to her orphaned nephew and nieces.  There is no reason to accept the theory that Miss Branwell was quite p. 52as formidable or offensive a personage as the Mrs. Read in Jane Eyre.  That she was a somewhat rigid and not over demonstrative woman, we may take for granted.  The one letter to her of any importance that I have seen—it is printed in Mrs. Gaskell’s life—was the attempt of Charlotte to obtain her co-operation in the projected visit to a Brussels school.  Miss Branwell provided the money readily enough it would seem, and one cannot doubt that in her later years she was on the best of terms with her nieces.  There may have been too much discipline in childhood, but discipline which would now be considered too severe was common enough at the beginning of the century.  The children, we may be sure, were left abundantly alone.  The writing they accomplished in their early years would sufficiently demonstrate that.  Miss Branwell died in 1842; and from her will, which I give elsewhere, it will be seen that she behaved very justly to her three nieces.

The reception by Mr. Brontë of his children’s literary successes has been very pleasantly recorded by Charlotte.  He was proud of his daughters, and delighted with their fame.  He seems to have had no small share of their affection.  Charlotte loved and esteemed him.  There are hundreds of her letters, in many of which are severe and indeed unprintable things about this or that individual; but of her father these letters contain not one single harsh word.  She wrote to him regularly when absent.  Not only did he secure the affection of his daughter, but the people most intimately associated with him next to his own children gave him a lifelong affection and regard.  Martha Brown, the servant who lived with him until his death, always insisted that her old master had been grievously wronged, and that a kinder, more generous, and in every way more worthy man had never lived.  Nancy Garrs, another servant, always spoke of Mr. Brontë as ‘the kindest man who ever drew breath,’ and as a good and affectionate father.  Forty years have gone by p. 53since Charlotte Brontë died; and thirty-six years have flown since Mr. Nicholls left the deathbed of his wife’s father; but through all that period he has retained the most kindly memories of one with whom his life was intimately associated for sixteen years, with whom at one crisis of his life, as we shall see, he had a serious difference, but whom he ever believed to have been an entirely honourable and upright man.

A lady visitor to Haworth in December 1860 did not, it is true, carry away quite so friendly an impression.  ‘I have been to see old Mr. Brontë,’ she writes, ‘and have spent about an hour with him.  He is completely confined to his bed, but talks hopefully of leaving it again when the summer comes round.  I am afraid that it will not be leaving it as he plans, poor old man!  He is touchingly softened by illness; but still talks in his pompous way, and mingles moral remarks and somewhat stale sentiments with his conversation on ordinary subjects.’  This is severe, but after all it was a literary woman who wrote it.  On the whole we may safely assume, with the evidence before us, that Mr. Brontë was a thoroughly upright and honourable man who came manfully through a somewhat severe life battle.  That is how his daughters thought of him, and we cannot do better than think with them. [53]

p. 54Mr. Brontë died on June 7, 1861, and his funeral in Haworth Church is described in the Bradford Review of the following week:—

‘Great numbers of people had collected in the churchyard, and a few minutes before noon the corpse was brought out through the eastern gate of the garden leading into the churchyard.  The Rev. Dr. Burnet, Vicar of Bradford, read the funeral service, and led the way into the church, and the following clergymen were the bearers of the coffin: The Rev. Dr. Cartman of Skipton; Rev. Mr. Sowden of Hebden Bridge; the Incumbents of Cullingworth, Oakworth, Morton, Oxenhope, and St. John’s Ingrow.  The chief mourners were the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, son-in-law of the deceased; Martha Brown, the housekeeper; and her sister; Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Wainwright.  There were several gentlemen followed the corpse whom we did not know.  All the shops in Haworth were closed, and the people filled every pew, and the aisles in the church, and many shed tears during the impressive reading of the service for the burial of the dead, by the vicar.  The body of Mr. Brontë was laid within the altar rails, by the side of his daughter Charlotte.  He is the last that can be interred inside of Haworth Church.  On the coffin was this inscription: “Patrick Brontë, died June 7th, 1861, aged 84 years.”’

His will, which was proved at Wakefield, left the bulk of his property, as was natural, to the son-in-law who had faithfully served and tended him for the six years which succeeded Charlotte Brontë’s death.

p. 55Extracted from the Principal Registry of the Probate Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice.

Being of sound mind and judgment, in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Patrick Brontë, B.A., Incumbent of Haworth, in the Parish of Bradford and county of York, make this my last Will and Testament: I leave forty pounds to be equally divided amongst all my brothers and sisters to whom I gave considerable sums in times past; And I direct the same sum of forty pounds to be sent for distribution to Mr. Hugh Brontë, Ballinasceaugh, near Loughbrickland, Ireland; I leave thirty pounds to my servant, Martha Brown, as a token of regard for long and faithful services to me and my children; To my beloved and esteemed son-in-law, the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, B.A., I leave and bequeath the residue of my personal estate of every description which I shall be possessed of at my death for his own absolute benefit; And I make him my sole executor; And I revoke all former and other Wills, in witness whereof I, the said Patrick Brontë, have to this my last Will, contained in this sheet of paper, set my hand this twentieth day of June, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-five.

Patrick Brontë.—Signed and acknowledged by the said Patrick Brontë as his Will in the presence of us present at the same time, and who in his presence and in the presence of each other have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses: Joseph Redman, Eliza Brown.

The Irish relatives are not forgotten, and indeed this will gives the most direct evidence of the fact that for the sixty years that he had been absent from his native land he had always kept his own country, or at least his relatives in County Down, sufficiently in mind.

p. 56CHAPTER II: CHILDHOOD

Eighty years have passed over Thornton since that village had the honour of becoming the birthplace of Charlotte Brontë.  The visitor of to-day will find the Bell Chapel, in which Mr. Brontë officiated, a mere ruin, and the font in which his children were baptized ruthlessly exposed to the winds of heaven. [56a]  The house in which Patrick Brontë resided is now a butcher’s shop, and indeed little, one imagines, remains the same.  But within the new church one may still overhaul the registers, and find, with but little trouble, a record of the baptism of the Brontë children.  There, amid the names of the rough and rude peasantry of the neighbourhood, we find the accompanying entries, [56b] differing from their neighbours only by the fact that Mr. Morgan or Mr. Fennell came to the help of their relatives and officiated in place of Mr. Brontë.  Mr. Brontë, it will be observed, had already received his appointment to Haworth when Anne was baptized.

There were, it is well known, two elder children, Maria and Elizabeth, born at Hartshead, and doomed to die speedily at Haworth.  A vague memory of Maria lives in the Helen Burns of Jane Eyre, but the only tangible records of the pair, as far as I am able to ascertain, are a couple of samplers, of the kind which Mrs. Brontë and her sisters had worked at Penzance a generation earlier.

p. 57Maria Brontë finished this Sampler on the 16th of May at the age of eight years

one of them tells us, and the other:

Elizabeth Brontë finished this Sampler the 27th of July at the age of seven years.

Maria died at the age of twelve in May 1825, and Elizabeth in June of the same year, at the age of eleven.  It is, however, with their three sisters that we have most concern, although all the six children accompanied their parents to Haworth in 1820.

p. 58Haworth, we are told, has been over-described; and yet it may not be amiss to discover from the easily available directories what manner of place it was during the Brontë residence there.  Pigot’s Yorkshire Directory of 1828 gives the census during the first year of Mr. Brontë’s incumbency thus:—

Haworth, a populous manufacturing village, in the honour of Pontefract, Morley wapentake, and in the parish of Bradford, is four miles south of Keighley, containing, by the census of 1821, 4668 inhabitants.

Gentry and Clergy: Brontë, Rev. Patrick, Haworth; Heaton, Robert, gent., Ponden Hall; Miles, Rev. Oddy, Haworth; Saunders, Rev. Moses, Haworth.

From the same source twenty years later we obtain more explicit detail, which is not without interest to-day.

Haworth is a chapelry, comprising the hamlets of Haworth, Stanbury, and Near and Far Oxenhope, in the parish of Bradford, and wapentake of Morley, West Riding—Haworth being ten miles from Bradford, about the same distance from Halifax, Colne, and Skipton, three and a half miles S. from Keighley, and eight from Hebden Bridge, at which latter place is a station on the Leeds and Manchester railway.  Haworth is situated on the side of a hill, and consists of one irregularly built street—the habitations in that part called Oxenhope being yet more scattered, and Stanbury still farther distant; the entire chapelry occupying a wide space.  The spinning of worsted, and the manufacture of stuffs, are branches which here prevail extensively.

The Church or rather chapel (subject to Bradford), dedicated to St. Michael, was rebuilt in 1757: the living is a perpetual curacy, in the presentation of the vicar of Bradford and certain trustees; the present curate is the Rev. Patrick p. 59Brontë.  The other places of worship are two chapels for baptists, one each for primitive and Wesleyan methodists, and another at Oxenhope for the latter denomination.  There are two excellent free schools—one at Stanbury, the other, called the Free Grammar School, near Oxenhope; besides which there are several neat edifices erected for Sunday teaching.  There are three annual fairs: they are held on Easter-Monday, the second Monday after St. Peter’s day (old style), and the first Monday after Old Michaelmas day.  The chapelry of Haworth, and its dependent hamlets, contained by the returns for 1831, 5835 inhabitants; and by the census taken in June, 1841, the population amounted to 6301.

Haworth needs even to-day no further description, but the house in which Mr. Brontë resided, from 1820 till his death in 1861, has not been over-described, perhaps because Mr. Brontë’s successor has not been too well disposed to receive the casual visitor to Haworth under his roof.

Many changes have been made since Mr. Brontë died, but the house still retains its essentially interesting features.  In the time of the Brontës, it is true, the front outlook was as desolate as to-day it is attractive.  Then there was a little piece of barren ground running down to the walls of the churchyard, with here and there a currant-bush as the sole adornment.  Now we see an abundance of trees and a well-kept lawn.  Miss Ellen Nussey well remembers seeing Emily and Anne, on a fine summer afternoon, sitting on stools in this bit of garden plucking currants from the poor insignificant bushes.  There was no premonition of the time, not so far distant, when the rough doorway separating the churchyard from the garden, which was opened for their mother when they were little children, should be opened again time after time in rapid succession for their own biers to be carried through.  This gateway is now effectively bricked up.  In the days of the Brontës it was reserved for the p. 60passage of the dead—a grim arrangement, which, strange to say, finds no place in any one of the sisters’ stories.  We enter the house, and the door on the right leads into Mr. Brontë’s study, always called the parlour; that on the left into the dining-room, where the children spent a great portion of their lives.  From childhood to womanhood, indeed, the three girls regularly breakfasted with their father in his study.  In the dining-room—a square and simple room of a kind common enough in the houses of the poorer middle-classes—they ate their mid-day dinner, their tea and supper.  Mr. Brontë joined them at tea, although he always dined alone in his study.  The children’s dinner-table has been described to me by a visitor to the house.  At one end sat Miss Branwell, at the other, Charlotte, with Emily and Anne on either side.  Branwell was then absent.  The living was of the simplest.  A single joint, followed invariably by one kind or another of milk-pudding.  Pastry was unknown in the Brontë household.  Milk-puddings, or food composed of milk and rice, would seem to have made the principal diet of Emily and Anne Brontë, and to this they added a breakfast of Scotch porridge, which they shared with their dogs.  It is more interesting, perhaps, to think of all the daydreams in that room, of the mass of writing which was achieved there, of the conversations and speculation as to the future.  Miss Nussey has given a pleasant picture of twilight when Charlotte and she walked with arms encircling one another round and round the table, and Emily and Anne followed in similar fashion.  There was no lack of cheerfulness and of hope at that period.  Behind Mr. Brontë’s studio was the kitchen; and there we may easily picture the Brontë children telling stories to Tabby or Martha, or to whatever servant reigned at the time, and learning, as all of them did, to become thoroughly domesticated—Emily most of all.  Behind the dining-room was a p. 61peat-room, which, when Charlotte was married in 1854, was cleared out and converted into a little study for Mr. Nicholls.  The staircase with its solid banister remains as it did half a century ago; and at its foot one is still shown the corner which tradition assigns as the scene of Emily’s conflict with her dog Keeper.  On the right, at the back, as you mount the staircase, was a small room allotted to Branwell as a studio.  On the other side of this staircase, also at the back, was the servants’ room.  In the front of the house, immediately over the dining-room, was Miss Branwell’s room, afterwards the spare bedroom until Charlotte Brontë married.  In that room she died.  On the left, over Mr. Brontë’s study, was Mr. Brontë’s bedroom.  It was the room which, for many years, he shared with Branwell, and it was in that room that Branwell and his father died at an interval of twenty years.  On the staircase, half-way up, was a grandfather’s clock, which Mr. Brontë used to wind up every night on his way to bed.  He always went to bed at nine o’clock, and Miss Nussey well remembers his stentorian tones as he called out as he left his study and passed the dining-room door—‘Don’t be up late, children’—which they usually were.  Between these two front rooms upstairs, and immediately over the passage, with a door facing the staircase, was a box room; but this was the children’s nursery, where for many years the children slept, where the bulk of their little books were compiled, and where, it is more than probable, The Professor and Jane Eyre were composed.

Of the work of the Brontë children in these early years, a great deal might be written.  Mrs. Gaskell gives a list of some eighteen booklets, but at least eighteen more from the pen of Charlotte are in existence.  Branwell was equally prolific; and of him, also, there remains an immense mass of childish effort.  That Emily and Anne were industrious in a like measure there is abundant reason to p. 62believe; but scarcely one of their juvenile efforts remains to us, nor even the unpublished fragments of later years, to which reference will be made a little later.  Whether Emily and Anne on the eve of their death deliberately destroyed all their treasures, or whether they were destroyed by Charlotte in the days of her mourning, will never be known.  Meanwhile one turns with interest to the efforts of Charlotte and Branwell.  Charlotte’s little stories commence in her thirteenth year, and go on until she is twenty-three.  From thirteen to eighteen she would seem to have had one absorbing hero.  It was the Duke of Wellington; and her hero-worship extended to the children of the Duke, who, indeed, would seem even more than their father to have absorbed her childish affections.  Whether the stories are fairy tales or dramas of modern life, they all alike introduce the Marquis of Douro, who afterwards became the second Duke of Wellington, and Lord Charles Wellesley, whose son is now the third Duke of Wellington.  The length of some of these fragments is indeed incredible.  They fill but a few sheets of notepaper in that tiny handwriting; but when copied by zealous admirers, it is seen that more than one of them is twenty thousand words in length.

The Foundling, by Captain Tree, written in 1833, is a story of thirty-five thousand words, though the manuscript has only eighteen pages.  The Green Dwarf, written in the same year, is even longer, and indeed after her return from Roe Head in 1833, Charlotte must have devoted herself to continuous writing.  The Adventures of Ernest Alembert is a booklet of this date, and Arthuriana, or Odds and Ends: being a Miscellaneous Collection of Pieces in Prose and Verse, by Lord Charles Wellesley, is yet another.

The son of the Iron Duke is made to talk, in these little books, in a way which would have gladdened the heart of a modern interviewer:

‘Lord Charles,’ said Mr. Rundle to me one afternoon lately, p. 63‘I have an engagement to drink tea with an old college chum this evening, so I shall give you sixty lines of the Æneid to get ready during my absence.  If it is not ready by the time I come back you know the consequences.’  ‘Very well, Sir,’ said I, bringing out the books with a prodigious bustle, and making a show as if I intended to learn a whole book instead of sixty lines of the Æneid.  This appearance of industry, however, lasted no longer than until the old gentleman’s back was turned.  No sooner had he fairly quitted the room than I flung aside the musty tomes, took my cap, and speeding through chamber, hall, and gallery, was soon outside the gates of Waterloo Palace.’

The Secret, another story, of which Mrs. Gaskell gave a facsimile of the first page, was also written in 1833, and indeed in this, her seventeenth year, Charlotte Brontë must have written as much as in any year of her life.  When at Roe Head, 1832-3, she would seem to have worked at her studies, and particularly her drawing; but in the interval between Cowan Bridge and Roe Head she wrote a great deal.  The earliest manuscripts in my possession bear date 1829—that is to say, in Charlotte’s thirteenth year.  They are her Tales of the Islanders, which extend to four little volumes in brown paper covers neatly inscribed ‘First Volume,’ ‘Second Volume,’ and so on.  The Duke is of absorbing importance in these ‘Tales.’  ‘One evening the Duke of Wellington was writing in his room in Downing Street.  He was reposing at his ease in a simple easy chair, smoking a homely tobacco-pipe, for he disdained all the modern frippery of cigars . . . ’ and so on in an abundance of childish imaginings.  The Search after Happiness and Characters of Great Men of the Present Time were also written in 1829.  Perhaps the only juvenile fragment which is worth anything is also the only one in which she escapes from the Wellington enthusiasm.  It has an interest also in indicating that Charlotte in her girlhood heard something of her father’s native land.  It is called—

p. 64AN ADVENTURE IN IRELAND

During my travels in the south of Ireland the following adventure happened to me.  One evening in the month of August, after a long walk, I was ascending the mountain which overlooks the village of Cahill, when I suddenly came in sight of a fine old castle.  It was built upon a rock, and behind it was a large wood and before it was a river.  Over the river there was a bridge, which formed the approach to the castle.  When I arrived at the bridge I stood still awhile to enjoy the prospect around me: far below was the wide sheet of still water in which the reflection of the pale moon was not disturbed by the smallest wave; in the valley was the cluster of cabins which is known by the appellation of Cahin, and beyond these were the mountains of Killala.  Over all, the grey robe of twilight was now stealing with silent and scarcely perceptible advances.  No sound except the hum of the distant village and the sweet song of the nightingale in the wood behind me broke upon the stillness of the scene.  While I was contemplating this beautiful prospect, a gentleman, whom I had not before observed, accosted me with ‘Good evening, sir; are you a stranger in these parts?’  I replied that I was.  He then asked me where I was going to stop for the night; I answered that I intended to sleep somewhere in the village.  ‘I am afraid you will find very bad accommodation there,’ said the gentleman; ‘but if you will take up your quarters with me at the castle, you are welcome.’  I thanked him for his kind offer, and accepted it.

When we arrived at the castle I was shown into a large parlour, in which was an old lady sitting in an arm-chair by the fireside, knitting.  On the rug lay a very pretty tortoise-shell cat.  As soon as mentioned, the old lady rose; and when Mr. O’Callaghan (for that, I learned, was his name) told her who I was, she said in the most cordial tone that I was welcome, and asked me to sit down.  In the course of conversation I learned that she was Mr. O’Callaghan’s mother, and that his father had been dead about a year.  We p. 65had sat about an hour, when supper was announced, and after supper Mr. O’Callaghan asked me if I should like to retire for the night.  I answered in the affirmative, and a little boy was commissioned to show me to my apartment.  It was a snug, clean, and comfortable little old-fashioned room at the top of the castle.  As soon as we had entered, the boy, who appeared to be a shrewd, good-tempered little fellow, said with a shrug of the shoulder, ‘If it was going to bed I was, it shouldn’t be here that you’d catch me.’  ‘Why?’ said I.  ‘Because,’ replied the boy, ‘they say that the ould masther’s ghost has been seen sitting on that there chair.’  ‘And have you seen him?’  ‘No; but I’ve heard him washing his hands in that basin often and often.’  ‘What is your name, my little fellow?’  ‘Dennis Mulready, please your honour.’  ‘Well, good-night to you.’  ‘Good-night, masther; and may the saints keep you from all fairies and brownies,’ said Dennis as he left the room.

As soon as I had laid down I began to think of what the boy had been telling me, and I confess I felt a strange kind of fear, and once or twice I even thought I could discern something white through the darkness which surrounded me.  At length, by the help of reason, I succeeded in mastering these, what some would call idle fancies, and fell asleep.  I had slept about an hour when a strange sound awoke me, and I saw looking through my curtains a skeleton wrapped in a white sheet.  I was overcome with terror and tried to scream, but my tongue was paralysed and my whole frame shook with fear.  In a deep hollow voice it said to me, ‘Arise, that I may show thee this world’s wonders,’ and in an instant I found myself encompassed with clouds and darkness.  But soon the roar of mighty waters fell upon my ear, and I saw some clouds of spray arising from high falls that rolled in awful majesty down tremendous precipices, and then foamed and thundered in the gulf beneath as if they had taken up their unquiet abode in some giant’s cauldron.  But soon the scene changed, and I found myself in the mines of Cracone.  There were high pillars and stately arches, whose glittering splendour was never excelled by the brightest fairy palaces.  There were not many lamps, only p. 66those of a few poor miners, whose rough visages formed a striking contrast to the dazzling figures and grandeur which surrounded them.  But in the midst of all this magnificence I felt an indescribable sense of fear and terror, for the sea raged above us, and by the awful and tumultuous noises of roaring winds and dashing waves, it seemed as if the storm was violent.  And now the mossy pillars groaned beneath the pressure of the ocean, and the glittering arches seemed about to be overwhelmed.  When I heard the rushing waters and saw a mighty flood rolling towards me I gave a loud shriek of terror.  The scene vanished, and I found myself in a wide desert full of barren rocks and high mountains.  As I was approaching one of the rocks, in which there was a large cave, my foot stumbled and I fell.  Just then I heard a deep growl, and saw by the unearthly light of his own fiery eyes a royal lion rousing himself from his kingly slumbers.  His terrible eye was fixed upon me, and the desert rang and the rocks echoed with the tremendous roar of fierce delight which he uttered as he sprang towards me.  ‘Well, masther, it’s been a windy night, though it’s fine now,’ said Dennis, as he drew the window-curtain and let the bright rays of the morning sun into the little old-fashioned room at the top of O’Callaghan Castle.

C. Brontë.
April the 28th, 1829.

Six numbers of The Young Men’s Magazine were written in 1829; a very juvenile poem, The Evening Walk, by the Marquis of Douro, in 1830; and another, of greater literary value, The Violet, in the same year.  In 1831 we have an unfinished poem, The Trumpet Hath Sounded; and in 1832 a very long poem called The Bridal.  Some of them, as for example a poem called Richard Coeur de Lion and Blondel, are written in penny and twopenny notebooks of the kind used by laundresses.  Occasionally her father has purchased a sixpenny book and has written within the cover—

All that is written in this book must be in a good, plain, and legible hand.—P. B.

p. 67While upon this topic, I may as well carry the record up to the date of publication of Currer Bell’s poems.  A Leaf from an Unopened Volume was written in 1834, as were also The Death of Darius, and Corner Dishes.  Saul: a Poem, was written in 1835, and a number of other still unpublished verses.  There is a story called Lord Douro, bearing date 1837, and a manuscript book of verses of 1838, but that pretty well exhausts the manuscripts before me previous to the days of serious literary activity.  During the years as private governess (1839-1841) and the Brussels experiences (1842-1844), Charlotte would seem to have put all literary effort on one side.

There is only one letter of Charlotte Brontë’s childhood.  It is indorsed by Mr. Brontë on the cover Charlotte’s First Letter, possibly for the guidance of Mrs. Gaskell, who may perhaps have thought it of insufficient importance.  That can scarcely be the opinion of any one to-day.  Charlotte, aged thirteen, is staying with the Fennells, her mother’s friends of those early love-letters.

TO THE REV. P. BRONTË

‘Parsonage House, Crosstone,
September 23rd, 1829.

‘My dear Papa,—At Aunt’s request I write these lines to inform you that “if all be well” we shall be at home on Friday by dinner-time, when we hope to find you in good health.  On account of the bad weather we have not been out much, but notwithstanding we have spent our time very pleasantly, between reading, working, and learning our lessons, which Uncle Fennell has been so kind as to teach us every day.  Branwell has taken two sketches from nature, and Emily, Anne, and myself have likewise each of us drawn a piece from some views of the lakes which Mr. Fennell brought with him from Westmoreland.  The whole of these he intends keeping.  Mr. Fennell is sorry he cannot accompany us to Haworth on Friday, for want of room, p. 68but hopes to have the pleasure of seeing you soon.  All unite in sending their kind love with your affectionate daughter,

‘Charlotte Brontë.’

The following list includes the whole of the early Brontë Manuscripts known to me, or of which I can find any record:—

UNPUBLISHED BRONTË LITERATURE.
BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË

BY EMILY BRONTË

BY ANNE BRONTË.

BY BRANWELL BRONTË.

p. 74CHAPTER III: SCHOOL AND GOVERNESS LIFE

In seeking for fresh light upon the development of Charlotte Brontë, it is not necessary to discuss further her childhood’s years at Cowan Bridge.  She left the school at nine years of age, and what memories of it were carried into womanhood were, with more or less of picturesque colouring, embodied in Jane Eyre. [74]  From 1825 to 1831 p. 75Charlotte was at home with her sisters, reading and writing as we have seen, but learning nothing very systematically.  In 1831-32 she was a boarder at Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, some twenty miles from Haworth.  Miss Wooler lived to a green old age, dying in the year 1885.  She would seem to have been very proud of her famous pupil, and could not have been blind to her capacity in the earlier years.  Charlotte was with her as governess at Roe Head, and later at Dewsbury Moor.  It is quite clear that Miss Brontë was head of the school in all intellectual pursuits, and she made two firm friends—Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor.  A very fair measure of French and some skill in drawing appear to have been the most striking p. 76accomplishments which Charlotte carried back from Roe Head to Haworth.  There are some twenty drawings of about this date, and a translation into English verse of the first book of Voltaire’s Henriade.  With Ellen Nussey commenced a friendship which terminated only with the pencilled notes written from Charlotte Brontë’s deathbed.  The first suggestion of a regular correspondence is contained in the following letter.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, July 21st, 1832.

‘My dearest Ellen,—Your kind and interesting letter gave me the sincerest pleasure.  I have been expecting to hear from you almost every day since my arrival at home, and I at length began to despair of receiving the wished-for letter.  You ask me to give you a description of the manner in which I have passed every day since I left school.  This is soon done, as an account of one day is an account of all.  In the mornings, from nine o’clock to half-past twelve, I instruct my sisters and draw, then we walk till dinner; after dinner I sew till tea-time, and after tea I either read, write, do a little fancy-work, or draw, as I please.  Thus in one delightful, though somewhat monotonous course, my life is passed.  I have only been out to tea twice since I came home.  We are expecting company this afternoon, and on Tuesday next we shall have all the female teachers of the Sunday school to tea.  I do hope, my dearest Ellen, that you will return to school again for your own sake, though for mine I would rather that you would remain at home, as we shall then have more frequent opportunities of correspondence with each other.  Should your friends decide against your returning to school, I know you have too much good-sense and right feeling not to strive earnestly for your own improvement.  Your natural abilities are excellent, and under the direction of a judicious and able friend (and I know you have many such), you might acquire a decided taste for elegant literature, and even poetry, which, indeed, is included under that general term.  I was very much disappointed by your not sending the hair; you may be sure, my p. 77dearest Ellen, that I would not grudge double postage to obtain it, but I must offer the same excuse for not sending you any.  My aunt and sisters desire their love to you.  Remember me kindly to your mother and sisters, and accept all the fondest expressions of genuine attachment, from your real friend

‘Charlotte Brontë.

‘P.S.—Remember the mutual promise we made of a regular correspondence with each other.  Excuse all faults in this wretched scrawl.  Give my love to the Miss Taylors when you see them.  Farewell, my dear, dear, dear Ellen.’

Reading, writing, and as thorough a domestic training as the little parsonage could afford, made up the next few years.  Then came the determination to be a governess—a not unnatural resolution when the size of the family and the modest stipend of its head are considered.  Far more prosperous parents are content in our day that their daughters should earn their living in this manner.  In 1835 Charlotte went back to Roe Head as governess, and she continued in that position when Miss Wooler removed her school to Dewsbury Moor in 1836.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Dewsbury Moor, August 24th, 1837.

‘My dear Ellen,—I have determined to write lest you should begin to think I have forgotten you, and in revenge resolve to forget me.  As you will perceive by the date of this letter, I am again engaged in the old business—teach, teach, teach.  Miss and Mrs. Wooler are coming here next Christmas.  Miss Wooler will then relinquish the school in favour of her sister Eliza, but I am happy to say worthy Miss Wooler will continue to reside in the house.  I should be sorry indeed to part with her.  When will you come home?  Make haste, you have been at Bath long enough for all purposes.  By this time you have acquired polish enough, I am sure.  If the varnish is laid on much thicker, I am afraid the good wood underneath will be quite concealed, and your old Yorkshire p. 78friends won’t stand that.  Come, come, I am getting really tired of your absence.  Saturday after Saturday comes round, and I can have no hope of hearing your knock at the door and then being told that “Miss E. N. is come.”  Oh dear! in this monotonous life of mine that was a pleasant event.  I wish it would recur again, but it will take two or three interviews before the stiffness, the estrangement of this long separation will quite wear away.  I have nothing at all to tell you now but that Mary Taylor is better, and that she and Martha are gone to take a tour in Wales.  Patty came on her pony about a fortnight since to inform me that this important event was in contemplation.  She actually began to fret about your long absence, and to express the most eager wishes for your return.  My own dear Ellen, good-bye.  If we are all spared I hope soon to see you again.  God bless you.

‘C. Brontë.’

Things were not always going on quite so smoothly, as the following letter indicates.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Dewsbury Moor, January 4th, 1838.

‘Your letter, Ellen, was a welcome surprise, though it contained something like a reprimand.  I had not, however, forgotten our agreement.  You were right in your conjectures respecting the cause of my sudden departure.  Anne continued wretchedly ill, neither the pain nor the difficulty of breathing left her, and how could I feel otherwise than very miserable.  I looked on her case in a different light to what I could wish or expect any uninterested person to view it in.  Miss Wooler thought me a fool, and by way of proving her opinion treated me with marked coldness.  We came to a little éclaircissement one evening.  I told her one or two rather plain truths, which set her a-crying; and the next day, unknown to me, she wrote papa, telling him that I had reproached her bitterly, taken her severely to task, etc.  Papa sent for us the day after he had received her letter.  Meantime I had formed a firm resolution to quit Miss Wooler and her concerns for ever; but just before I went away, she took me to her room, and giving way to her p. 79feelings, which in general she restrains far too rigidly, gave me to understand that in spite of her cold, repulsive manners, she had a considerable regard for me, and would be very sorry to part with me.  If any body likes me, I cannot help liking them; and remembering that she had in general been very kind to me, I gave in and said I would come back if she wished me.  So we are settled again for the present, but I am not satisfied.  I should have respected her far more if she had turned me out of doors, instead of crying for two days and two nights together.  I was in a regular passion; my “warm temper” quite got the better of me, of which I don’t boast, for it was a weakness; nor am I ashamed of it, for I had reason to be angry.

‘Anne is now much better, though she still requires a great deal of care.  However, I am relieved from my worst fears respecting her.  I approve highly of the plan you mention, except as it regards committing a verse of the Psalms to memory.  I do not see the direct advantage to be derived from that.  We have entered on a new year.  Will it be stained as darkly as the last with all our sins, follies, secret vanities, and uncontrolled passions and propensities?  I trust not; but I feel in nothing better, neither humbler nor purer.  It will want three weeks next Monday to the termination of the holidays.  Come to see me, my dear Ellen, as soon as you can; however bitterly I sometimes feel towards other people, the recollection of your mild, steady friendship consoles and softens me.  I am glad you are not such a passionate fool as myself.  Give my best love to your mother and sisters.  Excuse the most hideous scrawl that ever was penned, and—Believe me always tenderly yours,

‘C. Brontë.’

Dewsbury Moor, however, did not agree with Charlotte.  That was probably the core of the matter.  She returned to Haworth, but only to look around for another ‘situation.’  This time she accepted the position of private governess in the family of a Mr. Sidgwick, at Stonegappe, in the same county.  Her letters from his house require no comment.  A sentence from the first was quoted by Mrs. Gaskell.

p. 80TO MISS EMILY J. BRONTË

‘Stonegappe, June 8th, 1839.

‘Dearest Lavinia,—I am most exceedingly obliged to you for the trouble you have taken in seeking up my things and sending them all right.  The box and its contents were most acceptable.  I only wish I had asked you to send me some letter-paper.  This is my last sheet but two.  When you can send the other articles of raiment now manufacturing, I shall be right down glad of them.

‘I have striven hard to be pleased with my new situation.  The country, the house, and the grounds are, as I have said, divine.  But, alack-a-day! there is such a thing as seeing all beautiful around you—pleasant woods, winding white paths, green lawns, and blue sunshiny sky—and not having a free moment or a free thought left to enjoy them in.  The children are constantly with me, and more riotous, perverse, unmanageable cubs never grew.  As for correcting them, I soon quickly found that was entirely out of the question: they are to do as they like.  A complaint to Mrs. Sidgwick brings only black looks upon oneself, and unjust, partial excuses to screen the children.  I have tried that plan once.  It succeeded so notably that I shall try it no more.  I said in my last letter that Mrs. Sidgwick did not know me.  I now begin to find that she does not intend to know me, that she cares nothing in the world about me except to contrive how the greatest possible quantity of labour may be squeezed out of me, and to that end she overwhelms me with oceans of needlework, yards of cambric to hem, muslin night-caps to make, and, above all things, dolls to dress.  I do not think she likes me at all, because I can’t help being shy in such an entirely novel scene, surrounded as I have hitherto been by strange and constantly changing faces.  I see now more clearly than I have ever done before that a private governess has no existence, is not considered as a living and rational being except as connected with the wearisome duties she has to fulfil.  While she is teaching the children, working for them, amusing them, it is all right.  If she steals a moment for herself she is a nuisance.  p. 81Nevertheless, Mrs. Sidgwick is universally considered an amiable woman.  Her manners are fussily affable.  She talks a great deal, but as it seems to me not much to the purpose.  Perhaps I may like her better after a while.  At present I have no call to her.  Mr. Sidgwick is in my opinion a hundred times better—less profession, less bustling condescension, but a far kinder heart.  It is very seldom that he speaks to me, but when he does I always feel happier and more settled for some minutes after.  He never asks me to wipe the children’s smutty noses or tie their shoes or fetch their pinafores or set them a chair.  One of the pleasantest afternoons I have spent here—indeed, the only one at all pleasant—was when Mr. Sidgwick walked out with his children, and I had orders to follow a little behind.  As he strolled on through his fields with his magnificent Newfoundland dog at his side, he looked very like what a frank, wealthy, Conservative gentleman ought to be.  He spoke freely and unaffectedly to the people he met, and though he indulged his children and allowed them to tease himself far too much, he would not suffer them grossly to insult others.

‘I am getting quite to have a regard for the Carter family.  At home I should not care for them, but here they are friends.  Mr. Carter was at Mirfield yesterday and saw Anne.  He says she was looking uncommonly well.  Poor girl, she must indeed wish to be at home.  As to Mrs. Collins’ report that Mrs. Sidgwick intended to keep me permanently, I do not think that such was ever her design.  Moreover, I would not stay without some alterations.  For instance, this burden of sewing would have to be removed.  It is too bad for anything.  I never in my whole life had my time so fully taken up.  Next week we are going to Swarcliffe, Mr. Greenwood’s place near Harrogate, to stay three weeks or a month.  After that time I hope Miss Hoby will return.  Don’t show this letter to papa or aunt, only to Branwell.  They will think I am never satisfied wherever I am.  I complain to you because it is a relief, and really I have had some unexpected mortifications to put up with.  However, things may mend, but Mrs. p. 82Sidgwick expects me to do things that I cannot do—to love her children and be entirely devoted to them.  I am really very well.  I am so sleepy that I can write no more.  I must leave off.  Love to all.—Good-bye.

‘Direct your next dispatch—J. Greenwood, Esq., Swarcliffe, near Harrogate.

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Swarcliffe, June 15th, 1839.

‘My dearest Ellen,—I am writing a letter to you with pencil because I cannot just now procure ink without going into the drawing-room, where I do not wish to go.  I only received your letter yesterday, for we are not now residing at Stonegappe but at Swarcliffe, a summer residence of Mr. Greenwood’s, Mrs. Sidgwick’s father; it is near Harrogate and Ripon.  I should have written to you long since, and told you every detail of the utterly new scene into which I have lately been cast, had I not been daily expecting a letter from yourself, and wondering and lamenting that you did not write, for you will remember it was your turn.  I must not bother you too much with my sorrows, of which, I fear, you have heard an exaggerated account.  If you were near me, perhaps I might be tempted to tell you all, to grow egotistical, and pour out the long history of a private governess’s trials and crosses in her first situation.  As it is, I will only ask you to imagine the miseries of a reserved wretch like me thrown at once into the midst of a large family, proud as peacocks and wealthy as Jews, at a time when they were particularly gay, when the house was filled with company—all strangers: people whose faces I had never seen before.  In this state I had a charge given of a set of horrid children, whom I was expected constantly to amuse, as well as instruct.  I soon found that the constant demand on my stock of animal spirits reduced them to the lowest state of exhaustion; at times I felt—and, I suppose seemed—depressed.  To my astonishment, I was taken to task on the subject by Mrs. Sidgwick, with a sternness of manner and a harshness of language scarcely credible.  Like a fool, I cried most bitterly.  I could not help it; my spirits quite failed me at first.  p. 83I thought I had done my best, strained every nerve to please her; and to be treated in that way, merely because I was shy and sometimes melancholy, was too bad.  At first I was for giving all up and going home.  But after a little reflection, I determined to summon what energy I had, and to weather the storm.  I said to myself, “I had never yet quitted a place without gaining a friend; adversity is a good school; the poor are born to labour, and the dependent to endure.”  I resolved to be patient, to command my feelings, and to take what came; the ordeal, I reflected, would not last many weeks, and I trusted it would do me good.  I recollected the fable of the willow and the oak; I bent quietly, and now I trust the storm is blowing over.  Mrs. Sidgwick is generally considered an agreeable woman; so she is, I doubt not, in general society.  Her health is sound, her animal spirits good, consequently she is cheerful in company.  But oh! does this compensate for the absence of every fine feeling, of every gentle and delicate sentiment?  She behaves somewhat more civilly to me now than she did at first, and the children are a little more manageable; but she does not know my character, and she does not wish to know it.  I have never had five minutes conversation with her since I came, except when she was scolding me.  I have no wish to be pitied, except by yourself.  If I were talking to you I could tell you much more.  Good-bye, dear, dear Ellen.  Write to me again very soon, and tell me how you are.

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, July 26th, 1839.

‘Dear Ellen,—I left Swarcliffe a week since.  I never was so glad to get out of a house in my life; but I’ll trouble you with no complaints at present.  Write to me directly; explain your plans more fully.  Say when you go, and I shall be able in my answer to say decidedly whether I can accompany you or not.  I must, I will, I’m set upon it—I’ll be obstinate and bear down all opposition.—Good-bye, yours faithfully,

‘C. Brontë.’

That experience with the Sidgwicks rankled for many a p. 84day, and we find Charlotte Brontë referring to it in her letters from Brussels.  At the same time it is not necessary to assume any very serious inhumanity on the part of the Sidgwicks or their successors the Whites, to whom Charlotte was indebted for her second term as private governess.  Hers was hardly a temperament adapted for that docile part, and one thinks of the author of Villette, and the possessor of one of the most vigorous prose styles in our language, condemned to a perpetual manufacture of night-caps, with something like a shudder.  And at the same time it may be urged that Charlotte Brontë did not suffer in vain, and that through her the calling of a nursery governess may have received some added measure of dignity and consideration on the part of sister-women.

A month or two later we find Charlotte dealing with the subject in a letter to Ellen Nussey.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, January 24th, 1840.

‘My dear Ellen,—You could never live in an unruly, violent family of modern children, such for instance as those at Blake Hall.  Anne is not to return.  Mrs. Ingham is a placid, mild woman; but as for the children, it was one struggle of life-wearing exertion to keep them in anything like decent order.  I am miserable when I allow myself to dwell on the necessity of spending my life as a governess.  The chief requisite for that station seems to me to be the power of taking things easily as they come, and of making oneself comfortable and at home wherever we may chance to be—qualities in which all our family are singularly deficient.  I know I cannot live with a person like Mrs. Sidgwick, but I hope all women are not like her, and my motto is “try again.”  Mary Taylor, I am sorry to hear, is ill—have you seen her or heard anything of her lately?  Sickness seems very general, and death too, at least in this neighbourhood.—Ever yours,

‘C. B.’

She ‘tried again’ but with just as little success.  In p. 85March 1841 she entered the family of a Mr. White of Upperwood House, Rawdon.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Upperwood House, April 1st, 1841.

‘My dear Nell,—It is twelve o’clock at night, but I must just write to you a word before I go to bed.  If you think I am going to refuse your invitation, or if you sent it me with that idea, you’re mistaken.  As soon as I read your shabby little note, I gathered up my spirits directly, walked on the impulse of the moment into Mrs. White’s presence, popped the question, and for two minutes received no answer.  Will she refuse me when I work so hard for her? thought I.  “Ye-e-es” was said in a reluctant, cold tone.  “Thank you, m’am,” said I, with extreme cordiality, and was marching from the room when she recalled me with: “You’d better go on Saturday afternoon then, when the children have holiday, and if you return in time for them to have all their lessons on Monday morning, I don’t see that much will be lost.”  You are a genuine Turk, thought I, but again I assented.  Saturday after next, then, is the day appointed—not next Saturday, mind.  I do not quite know whether the offer about the gig is not entirely out of your own head or if George has given his consent to it—whether that consent has not been wrung from him by the most persevering and irresistible teasing on the part of a certain young person of my acquaintance.  I make no manner of doubt that if he does send the conveyance (as Miss Wooler used to denominate all wheeled vehicles) it will be to his own extreme detriment and inconvenience, but for once in my life I’ll not mind this, or bother my head about it.  I’ll come—God knows with a thankful and joyful heart—glad of a day’s reprieve from labour.  If you don’t send the gig I’ll walk.  Now mind, I am not coming to Brookroyd with the idea of dissuading Mary Taylor from going to New Zealand.  I’ve said everything I mean to say on that subject, and she has a perfect right to decide for herself.  I am coming to taste the pleasure of liberty, a bit of pleasant congenial talk, and a p. 86sight of two or three faces I like.  God bless you.  I want to see you again.  Huzza for Saturday afternoon after next!  Good-night, my lass.

‘C. Brontë.

‘Have you lit your pipe with Mr. Weightman’s valentine?’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Upperwood House, May 4th, 1841.

‘Dear Nell,—I have been a long time without writing to you; but I think, knowing as you do how I am situated in the matter of time, you will not be angry with me.  Your brother George will have told you that he did not go into the house when we arrived at Rawdon, for which omission of his Mrs. White was very near blowing me up.  She went quite red in the face with vexation when she heard that the gentleman had just driven within the gates and then back again, for she is very touchy in the matter of opinion.  Mr. White also seemed to regret the circumstance from more hospitable and kindly motives.  I assure you, if you were to come and see me you would have quite a fuss made over you.  During the last three weeks that hideous operation called “a thorough clean” has been going on in the house.  It is now nearly completed, for which I thank my stars, as during its progress I have fulfilled the twofold character of nurse and governess, while the nurse has been transmuted into cook and housemaid.  That nurse, by-the-bye, is the prettiest lass you ever saw, and when dressed has much more the air of a lady than her mistress.  Well can I believe that Mrs. White has been an exciseman’s daughter, and I am convinced also that Mr. White’s extraction is very low.  Yet Mrs. White talks in an amusing strain of pomposity about his and her family and connections, and affects to look down with wondrous hauteur on the whole race of tradesfolk, as she terms men of business.  I was beginning to think Mrs. White a good sort of body in spite of all her bouncing and boasting, her bad grammar and worse orthography, but I have had experience of one little trait in her character which condemns her a long way with me.  After treating a person in the most familiar terms of equality for a long time, if any little thing goes wrong she does p. 87not scruple to give way to anger in a very coarse, unladylike manner.  I think passion is the true test of vulgarity or refinement.

‘This place looks exquisitely beautiful just now.  The grounds are certainly lovely, and all is as green as an emerald.  I wish you would just come and look at it.  Mrs. White would be as proud as Punch to show it you.  Mr. White has been writing an urgent invitation to papa, entreating him to come and spend a week here.  I don’t at all wish papa to come, it would be like incurring an obligation.  Somehow, I have managed to get a good deal more control over the children lately—this makes my life a good deal easier; also, by dint of nursing the fat baby, it has got to know me and be fond of me.  I suspect myself of growing rather fond of it.  Exertion of any kind is always beneficial.  Come and see me if you can in any way get, I want to see you.  It seems Martha Taylor is fairly gone.  Good-bye, my lassie.—Yours insufferably,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO REV. HENRY NUSSEY, Earnley Rectory

‘Upperwood House, Rawdon,
‘May 9th, 1841.

‘Dear Sir,—I am about to employ part of a Sunday evening in answering your last letter.  You will perhaps think this hardly right, and yet I do not feel that I am doing wrong.  Sunday evening is almost my only time of leisure.  No one would blame me if I were to spend this spare hour in a pleasant chat with a friend—is it worse to spend it in a friendly letter?

‘I have just seen my little noisy charges deposited snugly in their cribs, and I am sitting alone in the school-room with the quiet of a Sunday evening pervading the grounds and gardens outside my window.  I owe you a letter—can I choose a better time than the present for paying my debt?  Now, Mr. Nussey, you need not expect any gossip or news, I have none to tell you—even if I had I am not at present in the mood to communicate them.  You will excuse an unconnected letter.  If I had thought you critical or captious I would have declined the task of corresponding with you.  When I reflect, indeed, it p. 88seems strange that I should sit down to write without a feeling of formality and restraint to an individual with whom I am personally so little acquainted as I am with yourself; but the fact is, I cannot be formal in a letter—if I write at all I must write as I think.  It seems Ellen has told you that I am become a governess again.  As you say, it is indeed a hard thing for flesh and blood to leave home, especially a good home—not a wealthy or splendid one.  My home is humble and unattractive to strangers, but to me it contains what I shall find nowhere else in the world—the profound, the intense affection which brothers and sisters feel for each other when their minds are cast in the same mould, their ideas drawn from the same source—when they have clung to each other from childhood, and when disputes have never sprung up to divide them.

‘We are all separated now, and winning our bread amongst strangers as we can—my sister Anne is near York, my brother in a situation near Halifax, I am here.  Emily is the only one left at home, where her usefulness and willingness make her indispensable.  Under these circumstances should we repine?  I think not—our mutual affection ought to comfort us under all difficulties.  If the God on whom we must all depend will but vouchsafe us health and the power to continue in the strict line of duty, so as never under any temptation to swerve from it an inch, we shall have ample reason to be grateful and contented.

‘I do not pretend to say that I am always contented.  A governess must often submit to have the heartache.  My employers, Mr. and Mrs. White, are kind worthy people in their way, but the children are indulged.  I have great difficulties to contend with sometimes.  Perseverance will perhaps conquer them.  And it has gratified me much to find that the parents are well satisfied with their children’s improvement in learning since I came.  But I am dwelling too much upon my own concerns and feelings.  It is true they are interesting to me, but it is wholly impossible they should be so to you, and, therefore, I hope you will skip the last page, for I repent having written it.

p. 89‘A fortnight since I had a letter from Ellen urging me to go to Brookroyd for a single day.  I felt such a longing to have a respite from labour, and to get once more amongst “old familiar faces,” that I conquered diffidence and asked Mrs. White to let me go.  She complied, and I went accordingly, and had a most delightful holiday.  I saw your mother, your sisters Mercy, Ellen, and poor Sarah, and your brothers Richard and George—all were well.  Ellen talked of endeavouring to get a situation somewhere.  I did not encourage the idea much.  I advised her rather to go to Earnley for a while.  I think she wants a change, and I dare say you would be glad to have her as a companion for a few months.—I remain, yours respectfully,

‘C. Brontë.’

The above letter was written to Miss Nussey’s brother, whose attachment to Charlotte Brontë has already more than once been mentioned in the current biographies.  The following letter to Miss Nussey is peculiarly interesting because of the reference to Ireland.  It would have been strange if Charlotte Brontë had returned as a governess to her father’s native land.  Speculation thereon is sufficiently foolish, and yet one is tempted to ask if Ireland might not have gained some of that local literary colour—one of its greatest needs—which always makes Scotland dear to the readers of Waverley, and Yorkshire classic ground to the admirers of Shirley.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Upperwood House, June 10th, 1841.

‘Dear Nell,—If I don’t scrawl you a line of some sort I know you will begin to fancy that I neglect you, in spite of all I said last time we met.  You can hardly fancy it possible, I dare say, that I cannot find a quarter of an hour to scribble a note in; but when a note is written it is to be carried a mile to the post, and consumes nearly an hour, which is a large portion of the day.  Mr. and Mrs. White have been gone a week.  I heard from them this morning; they are now at Hexham.  No p. 90time is fixed for their return, but I hope it will not be delayed long, or I shall miss the chance of seeing Anne this vacation.  She came home, I understand, last Wednesday, and is only to be allowed three weeks’ holidays, because the family she is with are going to Scarborough.  I should like to see her to judge for myself of the state of her health.  I cannot trust any other person’s report, no one seems minute enough in their observations.  I should also very much have liked you to see her.

‘I have got on very well with the servants and children so far, yet it is dreary, solitary work.  You can tell as well as me the lonely feeling of being without a companion.  I offered the Irish concern to Mary Taylor, but she is so circumstanced that she cannot accept it.  Her brothers have a feeling of pride that revolts at the thought of their sister “going out.”  I hardly knew that it was such a degradation till lately.

‘Your visit did me much good.  I wish Mary Taylor would come, and yet I hardly know how to find time to be with her.  Good-bye.  God bless you.

‘C. Brontë.

‘I am very well, and I continue to get to bed before twelve o’clock p.m.  I don’t tell people that I am dissatisfied with my situation.  I can drive on; there is no use in complaining.  I have lost my chance of going to Ireland.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, July 1st, 1841.

‘Dear Nell,—I was not at home when I got your letter, but I am at home now, and it feels like paradise.  I came last night.  When I asked for a vacation, Mrs. White offered me a week or ten days, but I demanded three weeks, and stood to my tackle with a tenacity worthy of yourself, lassie.  I gained the point, but I don’t like such victories.  I have gained another point.  You are unanimously requested to come here next Tuesday and stay as long as you can.  Aunt is in high good-humour.  I need not write a long letter.—Good-bye, dear Nell.

‘C. B.

‘P.S.—I have lost the chance of seeing Anne.  She is gone back to “The land of Egypt and the house of bondage.”  Also, little black Tom is dead.  Every cup, however sweet, has its drop p. 91of bitterness in it.  Probably you will be at a loss to ascertain the identity of black Tom, but don’t fret about it, I’ll tell you when you come.  Keeper is as well, big, and grim as ever.  I’m too happy to write.  Come, come, lassie.’

It must have been during this holiday that the resolution concerning a school of their own assumed definite shape.  Miss Wooler talked of giving up Dewsbury Moor—should Charlotte and Emily take it?  Charlotte’s recollections of her illness there settled the question in the negative, and Brussels was coming to the front.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Upperwood House, October 17th, 1841.

‘Dear Nell,—It is a cruel thing of you to be always upbraiding me when I am a trifle remiss or so in writing a letter.  I see I can’t make you comprehend that I have not quite as much time on my hands as Miss Harris or Mrs. Mills.  I never neglect you on purpose.  I could not do it, you little teazing, faithless wretch.

‘The humour I am in is worse than words can describe.  I have had a hideous dinner of some abominable spiced-up indescribable mess and it has exasperated me against the world at large.  So you are coming home, are you?  Then don’t expect me to write a long letter.  I am not going to Dewsbury Moor, as far as I can see at present.  It was a decent friendly proposal on Miss Wooler’s part, and cancels all or most of her little foibles, in my estimation; but Dewsbury Moor is a poisoned place to me; besides, I burn to go somewhere else.  I think, Nell, I see a chance of getting to Brussels.  Mary Taylor advises me to this step.  My own mind and feelings urge me.  I can’t write a word more.

‘C. B.’

TO MISS EMILY J. BRONTË

‘Upperwood House, Rawdon,
‘Nov. 7th, 1841.

‘Dear E. J.,—You are not to suppose that this note is written with a view of communicating any information on the subject we p. 92both have considerably at heart: I have written letters but I have received no letters in reply yet.  Belgium is a long way off, and people are everywhere hard to spur up to the proper speed.  Mary Taylor says we can scarcely expect to get off before January.  I have wished and intended to write to both Anne and Branwell, but really I have not had time.

‘Mr. Jenkins I find was mistakenly termed the British Consul at Brussels; he is in fact the English Episcopal clergyman.

‘I think perhaps we shall find that the best plan will be for papa to write a letter to him by and bye, but not yet.  I will give an intimation when this should be done, and also some idea of what had best be said.  Grieve not over Dewsbury Moor.  You were cut out there to all intents and purposes, so in fact was Anne, Miss Wooler would hear of neither for the first half year.

‘Anne seems omitted in the present plan, but if all goes right I trust she will derive her full share of benefit from it in the end.  I exhort all to hope.  I believe in my heart this is acting for the best, my only fear is lest others should doubt and be dismayed.  Before our half year in Brussels is completed, you and I will have to seek employment abroad.  It is not my intention to retrace my steps home till twelve months, if all continues well and we and those at home retain good health.

‘I shall probably take my leave of Upperwood about the 15th or 17th of December.  When does Anne talk of returning?  How is she?  What does W. W. [92] say to these matters?  How are papa and aunt, do they flag?  How will Anne get on with Martha?  Has W. W. been seen or heard of lately?  Love to all.  Write quickly.—Good-bye.

‘C. Brontë.

‘I am well.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Rawdon, December 10th, 1841.

‘My dear Ellen,—I hear from Mary Taylor that you are come home, and also that you have been ill.  If you are able to write comfortably, let me know the feelings that preceded your illness, and also its effects.  I wish to see you.  Mary Taylor p. 93reports that your looks are much as usual.  I expect to get back to Haworth in the course of a fortnight or three weeks.  I hope I shall then see you.  I would rather you came to Haworth than I went to Brookroyd.  My plans advance slowly and I am not yet certain where I shall go, or what I shall do when I leave Upperwood House.  Brussels is still my promised land, but there is still the wilderness of time and space to cross before I reach it.  I am not likely, I think, to go to the Château de Kockleberg.  I have heard of a less expensive establishment.  So far I had written when I received your letter.  I was glad to get it.  Why don’t you mention your illness.  I had intended to have got this note off two or three days past, but I am more straitened for time than ever just now.  We have gone to bed at twelve or one o’clock during the last three nights.  I must get this scrawl off to-day or you will think me negligent.  The new governess, that is to be, has been to see my plans, etc.  My dear Ellen, Good-bye.—Believe me, in heart and soul, your sincere friend,

‘C. B.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘December 17th, 1841.

‘My dear Ellen,—I am yet uncertain when I shall leave Upperwood, but of one thing I am very certain, when I do leave I must go straight home.  It is absolutely necessary that some definite arrangement should be commenced for our future plans before I go visiting anywhere.  That I wish to see you I know, that I intend and hope to see you before long I also know, that you will at the first impulse accuse me of neglect, I fear, that upon consideration you will acquit me, I devoutly trust.  Dear Ellen, come to Haworth if you can, if you cannot I will endeavour to come for a day at least to Brookroyd, but do not depend on this—come to Haworth.  I thank you for Mr. Jenkins’ address.  You always think of other people’s convenience, however ill and affected you are yourself.  How very much I wish to see you, you do not know; but if I were to go to Brookroyd now, it would deeply disappoint those at home.  I have some hopes of seeing Branwell at Xmas, and when p. 94I shall be able to see him afterwards I cannot tell.  He has never been at home for the last five months.—Good-night, dear Ellen,

‘C. B.’

TO MISS MERCY NUSSEY

‘Rawdon, December 17th.

‘My dear Miss Mercy,—Though I am very much engaged I must find time to thank you for the kind and polite contents of your note.  I should act in the manner most consonant with my own feelings if I at once, and without qualification, accepted your invitation.  I do not however consider it advisable to indulge myself so far at present.  When I leave Upperwood I must go straight home.  Whether I shall afterwards have time to pay a short visit to Brookroyd I do not yet know—circumstances must determine that.  I would fain see Ellen at Haworth instead; our visitations are not shared with any show of justice.  It shocked me very much to hear of her illness—may it be the first and last time she ever experiences such an attack!  Ellen, I fear, has thought I neglected her, in not writing sufficiently long or frequent letters.  It is a painful idea to me that she has had this feeling—it could not be more groundless.  I know her value, and I would not lose her affection for any probable compensation I can imagine.  Remember me to your mother.  I trust she will soon regain her health.—Believe me, my dear Miss Mercy, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, January 10th, 1842.

‘My dear Ellen,—Will you write as soon as you get this and fix your own day for coming to Haworth?  I got home on Christmas Eve.  The parting scene between me and my late employers was such as to efface the memory of much that annoyed me while I was there, but indeed, during the whole of the last six months they only made too much of me.  Anne has rendered herself so valuable in her difficult situation that they have entreated her to return to them, if it be but for a short time.  I almost think she will go back, if we can get p. 95a good servant who will do all our work.  We want one about forty or fifty years old, good-tempered, clean, and honest.  You shall hear all about Brussels, etc., when you come.  Mr. Weightman is still here, just the same as ever.  I have a curiosity to see a meeting between you and him.  He will be again desperately in love, I am convinced.  Come.

‘C. B.’ [95]

p. 96CHAPTER IV: THE PENSIONNAT HÉGER, BRUSSELS

Had not the impulse come to Charlotte Brontë to add somewhat to her scholastic accomplishments by a sojourn in Brussels, our literature would have lost that powerful novel Villette, and the singularly charming Professor.  The impulse came from the persuasion that without ‘languages’ the school project was an entirely hopeless one.  Mary and Martha Taylor were at Brussels, staying with friends, and thence they had sent kindly presents to Charlotte, at this time raging under the yoke of governess at Upperwood House.  Charlotte wrote the diplomatic letter to her aunt which ended so satisfactorily. [96]  p. 97The good lady—Miss Branwell was then about sixty years of age—behaved handsomely by her nieces, and it was agreed that Charlotte and Emily were to go to the Continent, Anne retaining her post of governess with Mrs. Robinson at Thorp Green.  But Brussels schools did not seem at the first blush to be very satisfactory.  Something better promised at Lille.

Here is a letter written at this period of hesitation and doubt.  A portion of it only was printed by Mrs. Gaskell.

p. 98TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘January 20th, 1842.

‘Dear Ellen,—I cannot quite enter into your friends’ reasons for not permitting you to come to Haworth; but as it is at present, and in all human probability will be for an indefinite time to come, impossible for me to get to Brookroyd, the balance of accounts is not so unequal as it might otherwise be.  We expect to leave England in less than three weeks, but we are not yet certain of the day, as it will depend upon the convenience of a French lady now in London, Madame Marzials, under whose escort we are to sail.  Our place of destination is changed.  Papa received an unfavourable account from Mr. or rather Mrs. Jenkins of the French schools in Brussels, and on further inquiry, an Institution in Lille, in the North of France, was recommended by Baptist Noel and other clergymen, and to that place it is decided that we are to go.  The terms are fifty pounds for each pupil for board and French alone.

‘I considered it kind in aunt to consent to an extra sum for a separate room.  We shall find it a great privilege in many ways.  I regret the change from Brussels to Lille on many accounts, chiefly that I shall not see Martha Taylor.  Mary has been indefatigably kind in providing me with information.  She has grudged no labour, and scarcely any expense, to that end.  Mary’s price is above rubies.  I have, in fact, two friends—you and her—staunch and true, in whose faith and sincerity I have as strong a belief as I have in the Bible.  I have bothered you both, you especially; but you always get the tongs and heap coals of fire upon my head.  I have had letters to write lately to Brussels, to Lille, and to London.  I have lots of chemises, night-gowns, pocket-handkerchiefs, and pockets to make, besides clothes to repair.  I have been, every week since I came home, expecting to see Branwell, and he has never been able to get over yet.  We fully expect him, however, next Saturday.  Under these circumstances how can I go visiting?  You tantalise me to death with talking of conversations by the fireside.  Depend upon it, we are not to have p. 99any such for many a long month to come.  I get an interesting impression of old age upon my face, and when you see me next I shall certainly wear caps and spectacles.—Yours affectionately,

‘C. B.’

This Mr. Jenkins was chaplain to the British Embassy at Brussels, and not Consul, as Charlotte at first supposed.  The brother of his wife was a clergyman living in the neighbourhood of Haworth.  Mr. Jenkins, whose English Episcopal chapel Charlotte attended during her stay in Brussels, finally recommended the Pensionnat Héger in the Rue d’Isabelle.  Madame Héger wrote, accepting the two girls as pupils, and to Brussels their father escorted them in February 1842, staying one night at the house of Mr. Jenkins and then returning to Haworth.

The life of Charlotte Brontë at Brussels has been mirrored for us with absolute accuracy in Villette and The Professor.  That, indeed, from the point of view of local colour, is made sufficiently plain to the casual visitor of to-day who calls in the Rue d’Isabelle.  The house, it is true, is dismantled with a view to its incorporation into some city buildings in the background, but one may still eat pears from the ‘old and huge fruit-trees’ which flourished when Charlotte and Emily walked under them half a century ago; one may still wander through the school-rooms, the long dormitories, and into the ‘vine-draped berceau’—little enough is changed within and without.  Here is the dormitory with its twenty beds, the two end ones being occupied by Emily and Charlotte, they alone securing the privilege of age or English eccentricity to curtain off their beds from the gaze of the eighteen girls who shared the room with them.  The crucifix, indeed, has been removed from the niche in the Oratoire where the children offered up prayer every morning; but with a copy of Villette in hand it is possible to restore every feature of the place, not excluding the adjoining Athenée with its small window overlooking the garden of the p. 100Pensionnat and the allée défendu.  It was from this window that Mr. Crimsworth of The Professor looked down upon the girls at play.  It was here, indeed, at the Royal Athenée, that M. Héger was Professor of Latin.  Externally, then, the Pensionnat Héger remains practically the same as it appeared to Charlotte and Emily Brontë in February 1842, when they made their first appearance in Brussels.  The Rue Fossette of Villette, the Rue d’Isabelle of The Professor, is the veritable Rue d’Isabelle of Currer Bell’s experience.

What, however, shall we say of the people who wandered through these rooms and gardens—the hundred or more children, the three or four governesses, the professor and his wife?  Here there has been much speculation and not a little misreading of the actual facts.  Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels to learn.  They did learn with energy.  It was their first experience of foreign travel, and it came too late in life for them to enter into it with that breadth of mind and tolerance of the customs of other lands, lacking which the Englishman abroad is always an offence.  Charlotte and Emily hated the land and people.  They had been brought up ultra-Protestants.  Their father was an Ulster man, and his one venture into the polemics of his age was to attack the proposals for Catholic emancipation.  With this inheritance of intolerance, how could Charlotte and Emily face with kindliness the Romanism which they saw around them?  How heartily they disapproved of it many a picture in Villette has made plain to us.

Charlotte had been in Brussels three months when she made the friendship to which I am indebted for anything that there may be to add to this episode in her life.  Miss Lætitia Wheelwright was one of five sisters, the daughters of a doctor in Lower Phillimore Place, Kensington.  Dr. Wheelwright went to Brussels for his health and for his children’s education.  The girls were day boarders at the Pensionnat, but they lived in the house for a full month p. 101or more at a time when their father and mother were on a trip up the Rhine.  Otherwise their abode was a flat in the Hotel Clusyenaar in the Rue Royale, and there during her later stay in Brussels Charlotte frequently paid them visits.  In this earlier period Charlotte and Emily were too busy with their books to think of ‘calls’ and the like frivolities, and it must be confessed also that at this stage Lætitia Wheelwright would have thought it too high a price for a visit from Charlotte to receive as a fellow-guest the apparently unamiable Emily.  Miss Wheelwright, who was herself fourteen years of age when she entered the Pensionnat Héger, recalls the two sisters, thin and sallow-looking, pacing up and down the garden, friendless and alone.  It was the sight of Lætitia standing up in the class-room and glancing round with a semi-contemptuous air at all these Belgian girls which attracted Charlotte Brontë to her.  ‘It was so very English,’ Miss Brontë laughingly remarked at a later period to her friend.  There was one other English girl at this time of sufficient age to be companionable; but with Miss Maria Miller, whom Charlotte Brontë has depicted under the guise of Ginevra Fanshawe, she had less in common.  In later years Miss Miller became Mrs. Robertson, the wife of an author in one form or another.

To Miss Wheelwright, and those of her sisters who are still living, the descriptions of the Pensionnat Héger which are given in Villette and The Professor are perfectly accurate.  M. Héger, with his heavy black moustache and his black hair, entering the class-room of an evening to read to his pupils was a sufficiently familiar object, and his keen intelligence amounting almost to genius had affected the Wheelwright girls as forcibly as it had done the Brontës.  Mme. Héger, again, for ever peeping from behind doors and through the plate-glass partitions which separate the passages from the school-rooms, was a constant source of irritation to all p. 102the English pupils.  This prying and spying is, it is possible, more of a fine art with the school-mistresses of the Continent than with those of our own land.  In any case, Mme. Héger was an accomplished spy, and in the midst of the most innocent work or recreation the pupils would suddenly see a pair of eyes pierce the dusk and disappear.  This, and a hundred similar trifles, went to build up an antipathy on both sides, which had, however, scarcely begun when Charlotte and Emily were suddenly called home by their aunt’s death in October.  A letter to Miss Nussey on her return sufficiently explains the situation.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, November 10th, 1842.

‘My dear Ellen,—I was not yet returned to England when your letter arrived.  We received the first news of aunt’s illness, Wednesday, Nov. 2nd.  We decided to come home directly.  Next morning a second letter informed us of her death.  We sailed from Antwerp on Sunday; we travelled day and night and got home on Tuesday morning—and of course the funeral and all was over.  We shall see her no more.  Papa is pretty well.  We found Anne at home; she is pretty well also.  You say you have had no letter from me for a long time.  I wrote to you three weeks ago.  When you answer this note, I will write to you more in detail.  Aunt, Martha Taylor, and Mr. Weightman are now all gone; how dreary and void everything seems.  Mr. Weightman’s illness was exactly what Martha’s was—he was ill the same length of time and died in the same manner.  Aunt’s disease was internal obstruction; she also was ill a fortnight.

‘Good-bye, my dear Ellen.

‘C. Brontë.’

The aunt whose sudden death brought Charlotte and Emily Brontë thus hastily from Brussels to Haworth must have been a very sensible woman in the main.  She left her money to those of her nieces who most needed it.  A perusal of her will is not without interest, and indeed it will be p. 103seen that it clears up one or two errors into which Mrs. Gaskell and subsequent biographers have rashly fallen through failing to expend the necessary half-guinea upon a copy.  This is it:—

Extracted from the District Probate Registry at York attached to Her Majesty’s High Court of Justice.

Depending on the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for peace here, and glory and bliss forever hereafter, I leave this my last Will and Testament: Should I die at Haworth, I request that my remains may be deposited in the church in that place as near as convenient to the remains of my dear sister; I moreover will that all my just debts and funeral expenses be paid out of my property, and that my funeral shall be conducted in a moderate and decent manner.  My Indian workbox I leave to my niece, Charlotte Brontë; my workbox with a china top I leave to my niece, Emily Jane Brontë, together with my ivory fan; my Japan dressing-box I leave to my nephew, Patrick Branwell Brontë; to my niece Anne Brontë, I leave my watch with all that belongs to it; as also my eye-glass and its chain, my rings, silver-spoons, books, clothes, etc., etc., I leave to be divided between my above-named three nieces, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Jane Brontë, and Anne Brontë, according as their father shall think proper.  And I will that all the money that shall remain, including twenty-five pounds sterling, being the part of the proceeds of the sale of my goods which belong to me in consequence of my having advanced to my sister Kingston the sum of twenty-five pounds in lieu of her share of the proceeds of my goods aforesaid, and deposited in the bank of Bolitho Sons and Co., Esqrs., of Chiandower, near Penzance, after the aforesaid sums and articles shall have been paid and deducted, shall be put into some safe bank or lent on good landed security, and there left to accumulate for the sole benefit of my four nieces, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Jane Brontë, Anne Brontë, and Elizabeth Jane Kingston; and this sum or sums, and whatever other property I may have, shall be equally divided between them when the youngest of them then living shall have arrived at the age of twenty-one years.  And should any one or more of these my four nieces die, her or their part or parts shall be equally divided amongst the survivors; p. 104and if but one is left, all shall go to that one: And should they all die before the age of twenty-one years, all their parts shall be given to my sister, Anne Kingston; and should she die before that time specified, I will that all that was to have been hers shall be equally divided between all the surviving children of my dear brother and sisters.  I appoint my brother-in-law, the Rev. P. Brontë, A.B., now Incumbent of Haworth, Yorkshire; the Rev. John Fennell, now Incumbent of Cross Stone, near Halifax; the Rev. Theodore Dury, Rector of Keighley, Yorkshire; and Mr. George Taylor of Stanbury, in the chapelry of Haworth aforesaid, my executors.  Written by me, Elizabeth Branwell, and signed, sealed, and delivered on the 30th of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-three, Elizabeth Branwell.  Witnesses present, William Brown, John Tootill, William Brown, Junr.

The twenty-eighth day of December, 1842, the Will of Elizabeth Branwell, late of Haworth, in the parish of Bradford, in the county of York, spinster (having bona notabilia within the province of York).  Deceased was proved in the prerogative court of York by the oaths of the Reverend Patrick Brontë, clerk, brother-in-law; and George Taylor, two of the executors to whom administration was granted (the Reverend Theodore Dury, another of the executors, having renounced), they having been first sworn duly to administer.

Effects sworn under £1500.

Testatrix died 29th October 1842.

Now hear Mrs. Gaskell:—

The small property, which she had accumulated by dint of personal frugality and self-denial, was bequeathed to her nieces.  Branwell, her darling, was to have had his share, but his reckless expenditure had distressed the good old lady, and his name was omitted in her will.

A perusal of the will in question indicates that it was made in 1833, before Branwell had paid his first visit to London, and when, as all his family supposed, he was on the high road to fame and fortune as an artist.  The old lady doubtless thought that the boy would be able to take p. 105good care of himself.  She had, indeed, other nieces down in Cornwall, but with the general sympathy of her friends and relatives in Penzance, Elizabeth Jane Kingston, who it was thought would want it most, was to have a share.  Had the Kingston girl, her mother, and the Brontë girls all died before him, the boy Branwell, it will be seen, would have shared the property with his Branwell cousins in Penzance, of whom two are still alive.  In any case, Branwell’s name was mentioned, and he received ‘my Japan dressing-box,’ whatever that may have been worth.

Three or four letters, above and beyond these already published, were written by Charlotte to her friend in the interval between Miss Branwell’s death and her return to Brussels; and she paid a visit to Miss Nussey at Brookroyd, and it was returned.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, November 20th, 1842.

‘Dear Ellen,—I hope your brother is sufficiently recovered now to dispense with your constant attendance.  Papa desires his compliments to you, and says he should be very glad if you could give us your company at Haworth a little while.  Can you come on Friday next?  I mention so early a day because Anne leaves us to return to York on Monday, and she wishes very much to see you before her departure.  I think your brother is too good-natured to object to your coming.  There is little enough pleasure in this world, and it would be truly unkind to deny to you and me that of meeting again after so long a separation.  Do not fear to find us melancholy or depressed.  We are all much as usual.  You will see no difference from our former demeanour.  Send an immediate answer.

‘My love and best wishes to your sister and mother.

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, November 25th, 1842.

‘My dear Ellen,—I hope that invitation of yours was given p. 106in real earnest, for I intend to accept it.  I wish to see you, and as in a few weeks I shall probably again leave England, I will not be too delicate and ceremonious and so let the present opportunity pass.  Something says to me that it will not be too convenient to have a guest at Brookroyd while there is an invalid there—however, I listen to no such suggestions.  Anne leaves Haworth on Tuesday at 6 o’clock in the morning, and we should reach Bradford at half-past eight.  There are many reasons why I should have preferred your coming to Haworth, but as it appears there are always obstacles which prevent that, I’ll break through ceremony, or pride, or whatever it is, and, like Mahomet, go to the mountain which won’t or can’t come to me.  The coach stops at the Bowling Green Inn, in Bradford.  Give my love to your sister and mother.

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, January 10th, 1843.

‘Dear Nell,—It is a singular state of things to be obliged to write and have nothing worth reading to say.  I am glad you got home safe.  You are an excellent good girl for writing to me two letters, especially as they were such long ones.  Branwell wants to know why you carefully exclude all mention of him when you particularly send your regards to every other member of the family.  He desires to know whether and in what he has offended you, or whether it is considered improper for a young lady to mention the gentlemen of a house.  We have been one walk on the moors since you left.  We have been to Keighley, where we met a person of our acquaintance, who uttered an interjection of astonishment on meeting us, and when he could get his breath, informed us that he had heard I was dead and buried.

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, January 15th, 1843.

‘Dear Nell,—I am much obliged to you for transferring the roll of muslin.  Last Saturday I found the other gift, for which you deserve smothering.  I will deliver Branwell your message.  p. 107You have left your Bible—how can I send it?  I cannot tell precisely what day I leave home, but it will be the last week in this month.  Are you going with me?  I admire exceedingly the costume you have chosen to appear in at the Birstall rout.  I think you say pink petticoat, black jacket, and a wreath of roses—beautiful!  For a change I would advise a black coat, velvet stock and waistcoat, white pantaloons, and smart boots.  Address Rue d’Isabelle.  Write to me again, that’s a good girl, very soon.  Respectful remembrances to your mother and sister.

‘C. Brontë.’

Then she is in Brussels again, as the following letter indicates.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Brussels, January 30th, 1843.

‘Dear Ellen,—I left Leeds for London last Friday at nine o’clock; owing to delay we did not reach London till ten at night—two hours after time.  I took a cab the moment I arrived at Euston Square, and went forthwith to London Bridge Wharf.  The packet lay off that wharf, and I went on board the same night.  Next morning we sailed.  We had a prosperous and speedy voyage, and landed at Ostend at seven o’clock next morning.  I took the train at twelve and reached Rue d’Isabelle at seven in the evening.  Madame Héger received me with great kindness.  I am still tired with the continued excitement of three days’ travelling.  I had no accident, but of course some anxiety.  Miss Dixon called this afternoon. [107]  Mary Taylor had told her I should be in Brussels the last week in January.  I am going there on Sunday, D.V.  Address—Miss Brontë, Chez Mme. Héger, 32 Rue d’Isabelle, Bruxelles.—Good-bye, dear.

‘C. B.’

This second visit of Charlotte Brontë to Brussels has given rise to much speculation, some of it of not the p. 108pleasantest kind.  It is well to face the point bluntly, for it has been more than once implied that Charlotte Brontë was in love with M. Héger, as her prototype Lucy Snowe was in love with Paul Emanuel.  The assumption, which is absolutely groundless, has had certain plausible points in its favour, not the least obvious, of course, being the inclination to read autobiography into every line of Charlotte Brontë’s writings.  Then there is a passage in a printed letter to Miss Nussey which has been quoted as if to bear out this suggestion: ‘I returned to Brussels after aunt’s death,’ she writes, ‘against my conscience, prompted by what then seemed an irresistible impulse.  I was punished for my selfish folly by a total withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of mind.’

It is perfectly excusable for a man of the world, unacquainted with qualifying facts, to assume that for these two years Charlotte Brontë’s heart was consumed with an unquenchable love for her professor—held in restraint, no doubt, as the most censorious admit, but sufficiently marked to secure the jealousy and ill-will of Madame Héger.  Madame Héger and her family, it must be admitted, have kept this impression afloat.  Madame Héger refused to see Mrs. Gaskell when she called upon her in the Rue d’Isabelle; and her daughters will tell you that their father broke off his correspondence with Miss Brontë because his favourite English pupil showed an undue extravagance of devotion.  ‘Her attachment after her return to Yorkshire,’ to quote a recent essay on the subject, ‘was expressed in her frequent letters in a tone that her Brussels friends considered it not only prudent but kind to check.  She was warned by them that the exaltation these letters betrayed needed to be toned down and replaced by what was reasonable.  She was further advised to write only once in six months, and then to limit the subject of her letters to her own health and that of her family, and to a plain account of her circumstances p. 109and occupations.’ [109a]  Now to all this I do not hesitate to give an emphatic contradiction, a contradiction based upon the only independent authority available.  Miss Lætitia Wheelwright and her sisters saw much of Charlotte Brontë during this second sojourn in Brussels, and they have a quite different tale to tell.  That misgiving of Charlotte, by the way, which weighed so heavily upon her mind afterwards, was due to the fact that she had left her father practically unprotected from the enticing company of a too festive curate.  He gave himself up at this time to a very copious whisky drinking, from which Charlotte’s home-coming speedily rescued him. [109b]

Madame Héger did indeed hate Charlotte Brontë in her later years.  This is not unnatural when we remember how that unfortunate woman has been gibbeted for all time in the characters of Mlle. Zoraïde Reuter and Madame Beck.  But in justice to the creator of these scathing portraits, it may be mentioned that Charlotte Brontë took every precaution to prevent Villette from obtaining currency in the city which inspired it.  She told Miss Wheelwright, with whom naturally, on her visits to London, she often discussed the Brussels life, that she had received a promise that there should be no translation, and that the book would never appear in the French language.  One cannot therefore fix upon Charlotte Brontë any responsibility for the circumstance that immediately after her death the novel appeared in the only tongue understood by Madame Héger.

Miss Wheelwright informs me that Charlotte Brontë did certainly admire M. Héger, as did all his pupils, very heartily.  Charlotte’s first impression, indeed, was not flattering: ‘He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but p. 110very choleric and irritable in temperament; a little black being, with a face that varies in expression.  Sometimes he borrows the lineaments of an insane tom-cat, sometimes those of a delirious hyena; occasionally, but very seldom, he discards these perilous attractions and assumes an air not above 100 degrees removed from mild and gentleman-like.’  But he was particularly attentive to Charlotte; and as he was the first really intelligent man she had met, the first man, that is to say, with intellectual interests—for we know how much she despised the curates of her neighbourhood—she rejoiced at every opportunity of doing verbal battle with him, for Charlotte inherited, it may be said, the Irish love of debate.  Some time after Charlotte had returned to England, and when in the height of her fame, she met her Brussels school-fellow in London.  Miss Wheelwright asked her whether she still corresponded with M. Héger.  Charlotte replied that she had discontinued to do so.  M. Héger had mentioned in one letter that his wife did not like the correspondence, and he asked her therefore to address her letters to the Royal Athenée, where, as I have mentioned, he gave lessons to the boys.  ‘I stopped writing at once,’ Charlotte told her friend.  ‘I would not have dreamt of writing to him when I found it was disagreeable to his wife; certainly I would not write unknown to her.’  ‘She said this,’ Miss Wheelwright adds, ‘with the sincerity of manner which characterised her every utterance, and I would sooner have doubted myself than her.’  Let, then, this silly and offensive imputation be now and for ever dismissed from the minds of Charlotte Brontë’s admirers, if indeed it had ever lodged there. [110]

p. 111Charlotte had not visited the Wheelwrights in the Rue Royale during her first visit to Brussels.  She had found the companionship of Emily all-sufficing, and Emily was not sufficiently popular with the Wheelwrights to have made her a welcome guest.  They admitted her cleverness, but they considered her hard, unsympathetic, and abrupt in manner.  We know that she was self-contained and homesick, pining for her native moors.  This was not evident to a girl of ten, the youngest of the Wheelwright children, who was compelled to receive daily a music lesson from Emily in her play-hours.  When, however, Charlotte came back to Brussels alone she was heartily welcomed into two or three English families, including those of Mr. Dixon, of the Rev. Mr. Jenkins, and of Dr. Wheelwright.  With the Wheelwright children she sometimes spent the Sunday, and with them she occasionally visited the English Episcopal church which the Wheelwrights attended, and of which the clergyman was a Mr. Drury.  When Dr. Wheelwright took his wife for a Rhine trip in May he left his four children—one little girl had died at Brussels, aged seven, in the preceding November—in the care of Madame Héger at the Pensionnat, and under the immediate supervision of Charlotte.

At this period there was plenty of cheerfulness in her life.  She was learning German.  She was giving English lessons to M. Héger and to his brother-in-law, M. Chappelle.  She went to the Carnival, and described it ‘animating to see the immense crowds and the general gaiety.’  p. 112‘Whenever I turn back,’ she writes, ‘to compare what I am with what I was, my place here with my place at Mrs. Sidgwick’s or Mrs. White’s, I am thankful.’

In a letter to her brother, however, we find the darker side of the picture.  It reveals many things apart from what is actually written down.  In this, the only letter to Branwell that I have been able to discover, apart from one written in childhood, it appears that the brother and sister are upon very confidential terms.  Up to this time, at any rate, Branwell’s conduct had not excited any apprehension as to his future, and the absence of any substantial place in his aunt’s will was clearly not due to misconduct.  Branwell was now under the same roof as his sister Anne, having obtained an appointment as tutor to young Edmund Robinson at Thorp Green, near York, where Anne was governess.  The letter is unsigned, concluding playfully with ‘yourn; and the initials follow a closing message to Anne on the same sheet of paper.

TO BRANWELL BRONTË

‘Brussels, May 1st, 1843.

‘Dear Branwell,—I hear you have written a letter to me.  This letter, however, as usual, I have never received, which I am exceedingly sorry for, as I have wished very much to hear from you.  Are you sure that you put the right address and that you paid the English postage, 1s. 6d.?  Without that, letters are never forwarded.  I heard from papa a day or two since.  All appears to be going on reasonably well at home.  I grieve only that Emily is so solitary; but, however, you and Anne will soon be returning for the holidays, which will cheer the house for a time.  Are you in better health and spirits, and does Anne continue to be pretty well?  I understand papa has been to see you.  Did he seem cheerful and well?  Mind when you write to me you answer these questions, as I wish to know.  Also give me a detailed account as to how you get on with your pupil and the rest of the family.  I have received a general p. 113assurance that you do well and are in good odour, but I want to know particulars.

‘As for me, I am very well and wag on as usual.  I perceive, however, that I grow exceedingly misanthropic and sour.  You will say that this is no news, and that you never knew me possessed of the contrary qualities—philanthropy and sugariness.  Das ist wahr (which being translated means, that is true); but the fact is, the people here are no go whatsoever.  Amongst 120 persons which compose the daily population of this house, I can discern only one or two who deserve anything like regard.  This is not owing to foolish fastidiousness on my part, but to the absence of decent qualities on theirs.  They have not intellect or politeness or good-nature or good-feeling.  They are nothing.  I don’t hate them—hatred would be too warm a feeling.  They have no sensations themselves and they excite none.  But one wearies from day to day of caring nothing, fearing nothing, liking nothing, hating nothing, being nothing, doing nothing—yes, I teach and sometimes get red in the face with impatience at their stupidity.  But don’t think I ever scold or fly into a passion.  If I spoke warmly, as warmly as I sometimes used to do at Roe-Head, they would think me mad.  Nobody ever gets into a passion here.  Such a thing is not known.  The phlegm that thickens their blood is too gluey to boil.  They are very false in their relations with each other, but they rarely quarrel, and friendship is a folly they are unacquainted with.  The black Swan, M. Héger, is the only sole veritable exception to this rule (for Madame, always cool and always reasoning, is not quite an exception).  But I rarely speak to Monsieur now, for not being a pupil I have little or nothing to do with him.  From time to time he shows his kind-heartedness by loading me with books, so that I am still indebted to him for all the pleasure or amusement I have.  Except for the total want of companionship I have nothing to complain of.  I have not too much to do, sufficient liberty, and I am rarely interfered with.  I lead an easeful, stagnant, silent life, for which, when I think of Mrs. Sidgwick, I ought to be very thankful.  Be sure you write to me soon, and beg of Anne p. 114to inclose a small billet in the same letter; it will be a real charity to do me this kindness.  Tell me everything you can think of.

‘It is a curious metaphysical fact that always in the evening when I am in the great dormitory alone, having no other company than a number of beds with white curtains, I always recur as fanatically as ever to the old ideas, the old faces, and the old scenes in the world below.

‘Give my love to Anne.—And believe me, yourn

‘Dear Anne,—Write to me.—Your affectionate Schwester,

‘C. B.

‘Mr. Héger has just been in and given me a little German Testament as a present.  I was surprised, for since a good many days he has hardly spoken to me.’

A little later she writes to Emily in similar strain.

TO MISS EMILY J. BRONTË

‘Brussels, May 29th, 1843.

‘Dear E. J.,—The reason of the unconscionable demand for money is explained in my letter to papa.  Would you believe it, Mdlle. Mühl demands as much for one pupil as for two, namely, 10 francs per month.  This, with the 5 francs per month to the Blanchisseuse, makes havoc in £16 per annum.  You will perceive I have begun again to take German lessons.  Things wag on much as usual here.  Only Mdlle. Blanche and Mdlle. Haussé are at present on a system of war without quarter.  They hate each other like two cats.  Mdlle. Blanche frightens Mdlle. Haussé by her white passions (for they quarrel venomously).  Mdlle. Haussé complains that when Mdlle. Blanche is in fury, “elle n’a pas de levres.”  I find also that Mdlle. Sophie dislikes Mdlle. Blanche extremely.  She says she is heartless, insincere, and vindictive, which epithets, I assure you, are richly deserved.  Also I find she is the regular spy of Mme. Héger, to whom she reports everything.  Also she invents—which I should not have thought.  I have now the p. 115entire charge of the English lessons.  I have given two lessons to the first class.  Hortense Jannoy was a picture on these occasions, her face was black as a “blue-piled thunder-loft,” and her two ears were red as raw beef.  To all questions asked her reply was, “je ne sais pas.”  It is a pity but her friends could meet with a person qualified to cast out a devil.  I am richly off for companionship in these parts.  Of late days, M. and Mde. Héger rarely speak to me, and I really don’t pretend to care a fig for any body else in the establishment.  You are not to suppose by that expression that I am under the influence of warm affection for Mde. Héger.  I am convinced she does not like me—why, I can’t tell, nor do I think she herself has any definite reason for the aversion; but for one thing, she cannot comprehend why I do not make intimate friends of Mesdames Blanche, Sophie, and Haussé.  M. Héger is wonderously influenced by Madame, and I should not wonder if he disapproves very much of my unamiable want of sociability.  He has already given me a brief lecture on universal bienveillance, and, perceiving that I don’t improve in consequence, I fancy he has taken to considering me as a person to be let alone—left to the error of her ways; and consequently he has in a great measure withdrawn the light of his countenance, and I get on from day to day in a Robinson-Crusoe-like condition—very lonely.  That does not signify.  In other respects I have nothing substantial to complain of, nor is even this a cause for complaint.  Except the loss of M. Héger’s goodwill (if I have lost it) I care for none of ’em.  I hope you are well and hearty.  Walk out often on the moors.  Sorry am I to hear that Hannah is gone, and that she has left you burdened with the charge of the little girl, her sister.  I hope Tabby will continue to stay with you—give my love to her.  Regards to the fighting gentry, and to old asthma.—Your

‘C. B.

‘I have written to Branwell, though I never got a letter from him.’

In August she is still more dissatisfied, but ‘I will p. 116continue to stay some months longer, till I have acquired German, and then I hope to see all your faces again.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Brussels, August 6th, 1843.

‘Dear Ellen,—You never answered my last letter; but, however, forgiveness is a part of the Christian Creed, and so having an opportunity to send a letter to England, I forgive you and write to you again.  Last Sunday afternoon, being at the Chapel Royal, in Brussels, I was surprised to hear a voice proceed from the pulpit which instantly brought all Birstall and Batley before my mind’s eye.  I could see nothing, but certainly thought that that unclerical little Welsh pony, Jenkins, was there.  I buoyed up my mind with the expectation of receiving a letter from you, but as, however, I have got none, I suppose I must have been mistaken.

‘C. B.

‘Mr. Jenkins has called.  He brought no letter from you, but said you were at Harrogate, and that they could not find the letter you had intended to send.  He informed me of the death of your sister.  Poor Sarah, when I last bid her good-bye I little thought I should never see her more.  Certainly, however, she is happy where she is gone—far happier than she was here.  When the first days of mourning are past, you will see that you have reason rather to rejoice at her removal than to grieve for it.  Your mother will have felt her death much—and you also.  I fear from the circumstance of your being at Harrogate that you are yourself ill.  Write to me soon.’

It was in September that the incident occurred which has found so dramatic a setting in Villette—the confession to a priest of the Roman Catholic Church of a daughter of the most militant type of Protestantism; and not the least valuable of my newly-discovered Brontë treasures is the letter which Charlotte wrote to Emily giving an unembellished account of the incident.

p. 117TO MISS EMILY J. BRONTË

‘Brussels, September 2nd, 1843.

‘Dear E. J.,—Another opportunity of writing to you coming to pass, I shall improve it by scribbling a few lines.  More than half the holidays are now past, and rather better than I expected.  The weather has been exceedingly fine during the last fortnight, and yet not so Asiatically hot as it was last year at this time.  Consequently I have tramped about a great deal and tried to get a clearer acquaintance with the streets of Bruxelles.  This week, as no teacher is here except Mdlle. Blanche, who is returned from Paris, I am always alone except at meal-times, for Mdlle. Blanche’s character is so false and so contemptible I can’t force myself to associate with her.  She perceives my utter dislike and never now speaks to me—a great relief.

‘However, I should inevitably fall into the gulf of low spirits if I stayed always by myself here without a human being to speak to, so I go out and traverse the Boulevards and streets of Bruxelles sometimes for hours together.  Yesterday I went on a pilgrimage to the cemetery, and far beyond it on to a hill where there was nothing but fields as far as the horizon.  When I came back it was evening; but I had such a repugnance to return to the house, which contained nothing that I cared for, I still kept threading the streets in the neighbourhood of the Rue d’Isabelle and avoiding it.  I found myself opposite to Ste. Gudule, and the bell, whose voice you know, began to toll for evening salut.  I went in, quite alone (which procedure you will say is not much like me), wandered about the aisles where a few old women were saying their prayers, till vespers begun.  I stayed till they were over.  Still I could not leave the church or force myself to go home—to school I mean.  An odd whim came into my head.  In a solitary part of the Cathedral six or seven people still remained kneeling by the confessionals.  In two confessionals I saw a priest.  I felt as if I did not care what I did, provided it was not absolutely wrong, and that it served to vary my life and yield a moment’s interest.  I took a fancy to change myself p. 118into a Catholic and go and make a real confession to see what it was like.  Knowing me as you do, you will think this odd, but when people are by themselves they have singular fancies.  A penitent was occupied in confessing.  They do not go into the sort of pew or cloister which the priest occupies, but kneel down on the steps and confess through a grating.  Both the confessor and the penitent whisper very low, you can hardly hear their voices.  After I had watched two or three penitents go and return I approached at last and knelt down in a niche which was just vacated.  I had to kneel there ten minutes waiting, for on the other side was another penitent invisible to me.  At last that went away and a little wooden door inside the grating opened, and I saw the priest leaning his ear towards me.  I was obliged to begin, and yet I did not know a word of the formula with which they always commence their confessions.  It was a funny position.  I felt precisely as I did when alone on the Thames at midnight.  I commenced with saying I was a foreigner and had been brought up a Protestant.  The priest asked if I was a Protestant then.  I somehow could not tell a lie and said “yes.”  He replied that in that case I could not “jouir du bonheur de la confesse”; but I was determined to confess, and at last he said he would allow me because it might be the first step towards returning to the true church.  I actually did confess—a real confession.  When I had done he told me his address, and said that every morning I was to go to the rue du Parc—to his house—and he would reason with me and try to convince me of the error and enormity of being a Protestant!!!  I promised faithfully to go.  Of course, however, the adventure stops there, and I hope I shall never see the priest again.  I think you had better not tell papa of this.  He will not understand that it was only a freak, and will perhaps think I am going to turn Catholic.  Trusting that you and papa are well, and also Tabby and the Holyes, and hoping you will write to me immediately,—I am, yours,

‘C. B.’

‘The Holyes,’ it is perhaps hardly necessary to add, is p. 119Charlotte’s irreverent appellation for the curates—Mr. Smith and Mr. Grant.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Brussels, October 13th, 1843.

‘Dear Ellen,—I was glad to receive your last letter; but when I read it, its contents gave me some pain.  It was melancholy indeed that so soon after the death of a sister you should be called from a distant county by the news of the severe illness of a brother, and, after your return home, your sister Ann should fall ill too.  Mary Dixon informs me your brother is scarcely expected to recover—is this true?  I hope not, for his sake and yours.  His loss would indeed be a blow—a blow which I hope Providence may avert.  Do not, my dear Ellen, fail to write to me soon of affairs at Brookroyd.  I cannot fail to be anxious on the subject, your family being amongst the oldest and kindest friends I have.  I trust this season of affliction will soon pass.  It has been a long one.

‘C. B.’

TO MISS EMILY J. BRONTË

‘Brussels, December 19th, 1843.

‘Dear E. J.,—I have taken my determination.  I hope to be at home the day after New Year’s Day.  I have told Mme. Héger.  But in order to come home I shall be obliged to draw on my cash for another £5.  I have only £3 at present, and as there are several little things I should like to buy before I leave Brussels—which you know cannot be got as well in England—£3 would not suffice.  Low spirits have afflicted me much lately, but I hope all will be well when I get home—above all, if I find papa and you and B. and A. well.  I am not ill in body.  It is only the mind which is a trifle shaken—for want of comfort.

‘I shall try to cheer up now.—Good-bye.

‘C. B.’

p. 120CHAPTER V: PATRICK BRANWELL BRONTË

The younger Patrick Brontë was always known by his mother’s family name of Branwell.  The name derived from the patron Saint of Ireland, with which the enthusiastic Celt, Romanist and Protestant alike, delights to disfigure his male child, was speedily banished from the Yorkshire Parsonage.  Branwell was a year younger than Charlotte, and it is clear that she and her brother were ‘chums,’ in the same way as Emily and Anne were ‘chums,’ in the earlier years, before Charlotte made other friends.  Even until two or three years from Branwell’s death, we find Charlotte writing to him with genuine sisterly affection, and, indeed, the only two family letters addressed to Branwell which are extant are from her.  One of them, written from Brussels, I have printed elsewhere.  The other, written from Roe Head, when Charlotte, aged sixteen, was at school there, was partly published by Mrs. Gaskell, but may as well be given here, copied direct from the original.

p. 121TO BRANWELL BRONTË

‘Roe Head, May 17th, 1832.

‘Dear Branwell,—As usual I address my weekly letter to you, because to you I find the most to say.  I feel exceedingly anxious to know how and in what state you arrived at home after your long and (I should think) very fatiguing journey.  I could perceive when you arrived at Roe Head that you were very much tired, though you refused to acknowledge it.  After you were gone, many questions and subjects of conversation recurred to me which I had intended to mention to you, but quite forgot them in the agitation which I felt at the totally unexpected pleasure of seeing you.  Lately I had begun to think that I had lost all the interest which I used formerly to take in politics, but the extreme pleasure I felt at the news of the Reform Bill’s being thrown out by the House of Lords, and of the expulsion or resignation of Earl Grey, etc., etc., convinced me that I have not as yet lost all my penchant for politics.  I am extremely glad that aunt has consented to take in Fraser’s Magazine, for though I know from your description of its general contents it will be rather uninteresting when compared with Blackwood, still it will be better than remaining the whole year without being able to obtain a sight of any periodical publication whatever; and such would assuredly be our case, as in the little wild, moorland village where we reside, there would be no possibility of borrowing or obtaining a work of that description from a circulating library.  I hope with you that the present delightful weather may contribute to the perfect restoration of our dear papa’s health, and that it may give aunt pleasant reminiscences of the salubrious climate of her native place.

‘With love to all,—Believe me, dear Branwell, to remain your affectionate sister,

Charlotte.’

‘As to you I find the most to say’ is significant.  And to Branwell, Charlotte refers again and again in most affectionate terms in many a later letter.  It is to her enthusiasm, indeed that we largely owe the extravagant estimate of Branwell’s ability which has found so abundant expression in books on the Brontës.

Branwell has himself been made the hero of at least three biographies. [121]  Mr. Francis Grundy has no importance for p. 122our day other than that he prints certain letters from Branwell in his autobiography.  Miss Mary F. Robinson, whatever distinction may pertain to her verse, should never have attempted a biography of Emily Brontë.  Her book is mainly of significance because, appearing in a series of Eminent Women, it served to emphasise the growing opinion that Emily, as well as Charlotte, had a place among the great writers of her day.  Miss Robinson added nothing to our knowledge of Emily Brontë, and her book devoted inordinate space to the shortcomings of Branwell, concerning which she had no new information.

Mr. Leyland’s book is professedly a biography of Branwell, and is, indeed, a valuable storehouse of facts.  It might have had more success had it been written with greater brightness and verve.  As it stands, it is a dull book, readable only by the Brontë enthusiast.  Mr. Leyland has no literary perception, and in his eagerness to show that Branwell was a genius, prints numerous letters and poems which sufficiently demonstrate that he was not.

Charlotte never hesitated in the earlier years to praise her brother as the genius of the family.  We all know how eagerly the girls in any home circle are ready to acknowledge and accept as signs of original power the most impudent witticisms of a fairly clever brother.  The Brontë household was not exceptionally constituted in this respect.  It is evident that the boy grew up with talent of a kind.  He could certainly draw with more idea of perspective than his sisters, and one or two portraits by him are not wanting in merit.  But there is no evidence of any special writing faculty, and the words ‘genius’ and ‘brilliant’ which have been freely applied to him are entirely misplaced.  Branwell was thirty-one years of age when he died, and it was only during the last year or two of his life that opium and alcohol had made him intellectually hopeless.  Yet, unless we accept the preposterous statement that he wrote Wuthering Heights, p. 123he would seem to have composed nothing which gives him the slightest claim to the most inconsiderable niche in the temple of literature.

Branwell appears to have worked side by side with his sisters in the early years, and innumerable volumes of the ‘little writing’ bearing his signature have come into my hands.  Verdopolis, the imaginary city of his sisters’ early stories, plays a considerable part in Branwell’s.  Real Life in Verdopolis bears date 1833.  The Battle of Washington is evidently a still more childish effusion.  Caractacus is dated 1830, and the poems and tiny romances continue steadily on through the years until they finally stop short in 1837—when Branwell is twenty years old—with a story entitled Percy.  By the light of subsequent events it is interesting to note that a manuscript of 1830 bears the title of The Liar Detected.

It would be unfair to take these crude productions of Branwell Brontë’s boyhood as implying that he had no possibilities in him of anything better, but judging from the fact that his letters, as a man of eight and twenty, are as undistinguished as his sister’s are noteworthy at a like age, we might well dismiss Branwell Brontë once and for all, were not some epitome of his life indispensable in an account of the Brontë circle.

Branwell was born at Thornton in 1817.  When the family removed to Haworth he studied at the Grammar School, although, doubtless, he owed most of his earlier tuition to his father.  When school days were over it was decided that he should be an artist.  To a certain William Robinson, of Leeds, he was indebted for his first lessons.  Mrs. Gaskell describes a life-size drawing of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne which Branwell painted about this period.  The huge canvas stood for many years at the top of the staircase at the parsonage. [123]  In 1835 Branwell went up to p. 124London with a view to becoming a pupil at the Royal Academy Art Schools.  The reason for his almost immediate reappearance at Haworth has never been explained.  Probably he wasted his money and his father refused supplies.  He had certainly been sufficiently in earnest at the start, judging from this letter, of which I find a draft among his papers.

TO THE SECRETARY, ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS

‘Sir,—Having an earnest desire to enter as probationary student in the Royal Academy, but not being possessed of information as to the means of obtaining my desire, I presume to request from you, as Secretary to the Institution, an answer to the questions—

  ‘Where am I to present my drawings?

  ‘At what time?

      and especially,

  ‘Can I do it in August or September?

—Your obedient servant,

Branwell Brontë.’

In 1836 we find him as ‘brother’ of the ‘Lodge of the Three Graces’ at Haworth.  In the following year he is practising as an artist in Bradford, and painting a number of portraits of the townsfolk.  At this same period he wrote to Wordsworth, sending verses, which he was at the time producing with due regularity.  In January 1840 Branwell became tutor in the family of Mr. Postlethwaite at Broughton-in-Furness.  It was from that place that he wrote the incoherent and silly letter which has been more than once printed, and which merely serves to show that then, as always, he had an ill-regulated mind.  It was from p. 125Broughton-in-Furness also that he addresses Hartley Coleridge, and the letters are worth printing if only on account of the similar destiny of the two men.

TO HARTLEY COLERIDGE

‘Broughton-in-Furness,
‘Lancashire, April 20th, 1840.

‘Sir,—It is with much reluctance that I venture to request, for the perusal of the following lines, a portion of the time of one upon whom I can have no claim, and should not dare to intrude, but I do not, personally, know a man on whom to rely for an answer to the questions I shall put, and I could not resist my longing to ask a man from whose judgment there would be little hope of appeal.

‘Since my childhood I have been wont to devote the hours I could spare from other and very different employments to efforts at literary composition, always keeping the results to myself, nor have they in more than two or three instances been seen by any other.  But I am about to enter active life, and prudence tells me not to waste the time which must make my independence; yet, sir, I like writing too well to fling aside the practice of it without an effort to ascertain whether I could turn it to account, not in wholly maintaining myself, but in aiding my maintenance, for I do not sigh after fame, and am not ignorant of the folly or the fate of those who, without ability, would depend for their lives upon their pens; but I seek to know, and venture, though with shame, to ask from one whose word I must respect: whether, by periodical or other writing, I could please myself with writing, and make it subservient to living.

‘I would not, with this view, have troubled you with a composition in verse, but any piece I have in prose would too greatly trespass upon your patience, which, I fear, if you look over the verse, will be more than sufficiently tried.

‘I feel the egotism of my language, but I have none, sir, in my heart, for I feel beyond all encouragement from myself, and I hope for none from you.

p. 126‘Should you give any opinion upon what I send, it will, however condemnatory, be most gratefully received by,—Sir, your most humble servant,

‘P. B. Brontë.

‘P.S.—The first piece is only the sequel of one striving to depict the fall from unguided passion into neglect, despair, and death.  It ought to show an hour too near those of pleasure for repentance, and too near death for hope.  The translations are two out of many made from Horace, and given to assist an answer to the question—would it be possible to obtain remuneration for translations for such as those from that or any other classic author?’

Branwell would appear to have gone over to Ambleside to see Hartley Coleridge, if we may judge by that next letter, written from Haworth upon his return.

TO HARTLEY COLERIDGE

‘Haworth, June 27th, 1840.

‘Sir,—You will, perhaps, have forgotten me, but it will be long before I forget my first conversation with a man of real intellect, in my first visit to the classic lakes of Westmoreland.

‘During the delightful day which I had the honour of spending with you at Ambleside, I received permission to transmit to you, as soon as finished, the first book of a translation of Horace, in order that, after a glance over it, you might tell me whether it was worth further notice or better fit for the fire.

‘I have—I fear most negligently, and amid other very different employments—striven to translate two books, the first of which I have presumed to send to you.  And will you, sir, stretch your past kindness by telling me whether I should amend and pursue the work or let it rest in peace?

‘Great corrections I feel it wants, but till I feel that the work might benefit me, I have no heart to make them; yet if your judgment prove in any way favourable, I will re-write the whole, without sparing labour to reach perfection.

‘I dared not have attempted Horace but that I saw the utter worthlessness of all former translations, and thought that a better p. 127one, by whomsoever executed, might meet with some little encouragement.  I long to clear up my doubts by the judgment of one whose opinion I should revere, and—but I suppose I am dreaming—one to whom I should be proud indeed to inscribe anything of mine which any publisher would look at, unless, as is likely enough, the work would disgrace the name as much as the name would honour the work.

‘Amount of remuneration I should not look to—as anything would be everything—and whatever it might be, let me say that my bones would have no rest unless by written agreement a division should be made of the profits (little or much) between myself and him through whom alone I could hope to obtain a hearing with that formidable personage, a London bookseller.

‘Excuse my unintelligibility, haste, and appearance of presumption, and—Believe me to be, sir, your most humble and grateful servant,

‘P. B. Brontë.

‘If anything in this note should displease you, lay it, sir, to the account of inexperience and not impudence.’

In October 1840, we find Branwell clerk-in-charge at the Station of Sowerby Bridge on the Leeds and Manchester Railway, and the following year at Luddenden Foot, where Mr. Grundy, the railway engineer, became acquainted with him, and commenced the correspondence contained in Pictures of the Past.

I have in my possession a small memorandum book, evidently used by Branwell when engaged as a railway clerk.  There are notes in it upon the then existing railways, demonstrating that he was trying to prime himself with the requisite facts and statistics for a career of that kind.  But side by side with these are verses upon ‘Lord Nelson,’ ‘Robert Burns,’ and kindred themes, with such estimable sentiments as this:—

‘Then England’s love and England’s tongue
And England’s heart shall reverence long
The wisdom deep, the courage strong,
Of English Johnson’s name.’

p. 128Altogether a literary atmosphere had been kindled for the boy had he had the slightest strength of character to go with it.  The railway company, however, were soon tired of his vagaries, and in the beginning of 1842 he returns to the Haworth parsonage.  The following letter to his friend Mr. Grundy is of biographical interest.

TO FRANCIS H. GRUNDY

‘October 25th, 1842.

‘My dear Sir,—There is no misunderstanding.  I have had a long attendance at the death-bed of the Rev. Mr. Weightman, one of my dearest friends, and now I am attending at the deathbed of my aunt, who has been for twenty years as my mother.  I expect her to die in a few hours.

‘As my sisters are far from home, I have had much on my mind, and these things must serve as an apology for what was never intended as neglect of your friendship to us.

‘I had meant not only to have written to you, but to the Rev. James Martineau, gratefully and sincerely acknowledging the receipt of his most kindly and truthful criticism—at least in advice, though too generous far in praise; but one sad ceremony must, I fear, be gone through first.  Give my most sincere respects to Mr. Stephenson, and excuse this scrawl—my eyes are too dim with sorrow to see well.—Believe me, your not very happy but obliged friend and servant,

‘P. B. Brontë.’

A week later he writes to the same friend:—

‘I am incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonising suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood.  I have suffered much sorrow since I last saw you at Haworth.’

Charlotte and Anne, it will be remembered, were at this time on their way home from Brussels, and Anne had to seek relief from her governess bonds at Mrs. Robinson’s.  Branwell would seem to have returned with Anne to Thorp p. 129Green, as tutor to Mr. Robinson’s son.  He commenced his duties in December 1842.

It would not be rash to assume—although it is only an assumption—that Branwell took to opium soon after he entered upon his duties at Thorp Green.  I have already said something of the trouble which befel Mrs. Gaskell in accepting the statements of Charlotte Brontë, and—after Charlotte’s death—of her friends, to the effect that Branwell became the prey of a designing woman, who promised to marry him when her husband—a venerable clergyman—should be dead.  The story has been told too often.  Branwell was dismissed, and returned to the parsonage to rave about his wrongs.  If Mr. Robinson should die, the widow had promised to marry him, he assured his friends.  Mr. Robinson did die (May 26, 1846), and then Branwell insisted that by his will he had prohibited his wife from marrying, under penalties of forfeiting the estate.  A copy of the document is in my possession:

The eleventh day of September 1846 the Will of the Reverend Edmund Robinson, late of Thorp Green, in the Parish of Little Ouseburn, in the County of York, Clerk, deceased, was proved in the Prerogative Court of York by the oaths of Lydia Robinson, Widow, his Relict; the Venerable Charles Thorp and Henry Newton, the Executors, to whom administration was granted.

Needless to say, the will, a lengthy document, put no restraint whatever upon the actions of Mrs. Robinson.  Upon the publication of Mrs. Gaskell’s Life she was eager to clear her character in the law-courts, but was dissuaded therefrom by friends, who pointed out that a withdrawal of the obnoxious paragraphs in succeeding editions of the Memoir, and the publication of a letter in the Times, would sufficiently meet the case.

p. 130Here is the letter from the advertisement pages of the Times.

‘8 Bedford Row,
‘London, May 26th, 1857.

‘Dear Sirs,—As solicitor for and on behalf of the Rev. W. Gaskell and of Mrs. Gaskell, his wife, the latter of whom is authoress of the Life of Charlotte Brontë, I am instructed to retract every statement contained in that work which imputes to a widowed lady, referred to, but not named therein, any breach of her conjugal, of her maternal, or of her social duties, and more especially of the statement contained in chapter 13 of the first volume, and in chapter 2 of the second volume, which imputes to the lady in question a guilty intercourse with the late Branwell Brontë.  All those statements were made upon information which at the time Mrs. Gaskell believed to be well founded, but which, upon investigation, with the additional evidence furnished to me by you, I have ascertained not to be trustworthy.  I am therefore authorised not only to retract the statements in question, but to express the deep regret of Mrs. Gaskell that she should have been led to make them.—I am, dear sirs, yours truly,

‘William Shaen.

‘Messrs. Newton & Robinson, Solicitors, York.’

A certain ‘Note’ in the Athenæum a few days later is not without interest now.

‘We are sorry to be called upon to return to Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë, but we must do so, since the book has gone forth with our recommendation.  Praise, it is needless to point out, implied trust in the biographer as an accurate collector of facts.  This, we regret to state, Mrs. Gaskell proves not to have been.  To the gossip which for weeks past has been seething and circulating in the London coteries, we gave small heed; but the Times advertises a legal apology, made on behalf of Mrs. Gaskell, withdrawing the statements put forth in her book respecting the cause of Mr. Branwell Brontë’s wreck and ruin.  These Mrs. Gaskell’s lawyer is now fain to confess his client advanced on insufficient testimony.  The telling of an p. 131episodical and gratuitous tale so dismal as concerns the dead, so damaging to the living, could only be excused by the story of sin being severely, strictly true; and every one will have cause to regret that due caution was not used to test representations not, it seems, to be justified.  It is in the interest of Letters that biographers should be deterred from rushing into print with mere impressions in place of proofs, however eager and sincere those impressions may be.  They may be slanders, and as such they may sting cruelly.  Meanwhile the Life of Charlotte Brontë must undergo modification ere it can be further circulated.’

Meanwhile let us return to Branwell Brontë’s life as it is contained in his sister’s correspondence.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘January 3rd, 1846.

‘Dear Ellen,—I must write to you to-day whether I have anything to say or not, or else you will begin to think that I have forgotten you; whereas, never a day passes, seldom an hour, that I do not think of you, and the scene of trial in which you live, move, and have your being.  Mary Taylor’s letter was deeply interesting and strongly characteristic.  I have no news whatever to communicate.  No changes take place here.  Branwell offers no prospect of hope; he professes to be too ill to think of seeking for employment; he makes comfort scant at home.  I hold to my intention of going to Brookroyd as soon as I can—that is, provided you will have me.

‘Give my best love to your mother and sisters.—Yours, dear Nell, always faithful,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘January 13th, 1845.

‘My dear Ellen,—I have often said and thought that you have had many and heavy trials to bear in your still short life.  You have always borne them with great firmness and calm so far—I hope fervently you will still be enabled to do so.  Yet there is something in your letter that makes me fear the present is p. 132the greatest trial of all, and the most severely felt by you.  I hope it will soon pass over and leave no shadow behind it.  I do earnestly desire to be with you, to talk to you, to give you what comfort I can.  Branwell and Anne leave us on Saturday.  Branwell has been quieter and less irritable on the whole this time than he was in summer.  Anne is as usual—always good, mild, and patient.  I think she too is a little stronger than she was.—Good-bye, dear Ellen,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘December 31st, 1845.

‘Dear Ellen,—I don’t know whether most to thank you for the very pretty slippers you have sent me or to scold you for occasioning yourself, in the slightest degree, trouble or expense on my account.  I will have them made up and bring them with me, if all be well, when I come to Brookroyd.

‘Never doubt that I shall come to Brookroyd as soon as I can, Nell.  I dare say my wish to see you is equal to your wish to see me.

‘I had a note on Saturday from Ellen Taylor, informing me that letters have been received from Mary in New Zealand, and that she was well and in good spirits.  I suppose you have not yet seen them, as you do not mention them; but you will probably have them in your possession before you get this note.

‘You say well in speaking of Branwell that no sufferings are so awful as those brought on by dissipation.  Alas! I see the truth of this observation daily proved.

‘Your friends must have a weary and burdensome life of it in waiting upon their unhappy brother.  It seems grievous, indeed, that those who have not sinned should suffer so largely.

‘Write to me a little oftener, Ellen—I am very glad to get your notes.  Remember me kindly to your mother and sisters.—Yours faithfully,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS WOOLER

‘January 30th, 1846.

‘My dear Miss Wooler,—I have not yet paid my usual visit to Brookroyd, but I frequently hear from Ellen, and she p. 133did not fail to tell me that you were gone into Worcestershire.  She was unable, however, to give me your address; had I known it I should have written to you long since.

‘I thought you would wonder how we were getting on when you heard of the Railway Panic, and you may be sure I am very glad to be able to answer your kind inquiries by an assurance that our small capital is as yet undiminished.  The “York and Midland” is, as you say, a very good line, yet I confess to you I should wish, for my part, to be wise in time.  I cannot think that even the very best lines will continue for many years at their present premiums, and I have been most anxious for us to sell our shares ere it be too late, and to secure the proceeds in some safer, if, for the present, less profitable investment.  I cannot, however, persuade my sisters to regard the affair precisely from my point of view, and I feel as if I would rather run the risk of loss than hurt Emily’s feelings by acting in direct opposition to her opinion.  She managed in a most handsome and able manner for me when I was at Brussels, and prevented by distance from looking after my own interests; therefore, I will let her manage still, and take the consequences.  Disinterested and energetic she certainly is, and if she be not quite so tractable or open to conviction as I could wish, I must remember perfection is not the lot of humanity.  And as long as we can regard those we love, and to whom we are closely allied, with profound and very unshaken esteem, it is a small thing that they should vex us occasionally by, what appear to us, unreasonable and headstrong notions.  You, my dear Miss Wooler, know full as well as I do the value of sisters’ affection to each other; there is nothing like it in this world, I believe, when they are nearly equal in age, and similar in education, tastes, and sentiments.

‘You ask about Branwell.  He never thinks of seeking employment, and I begin to fear he has rendered himself incapable of filling any respectable station in life; besides, if money were at his disposal he would use it only to his own injury; the faculty of self-government is, I fear, almost destroyed in him.  You ask me if I do not think men are p. 134strange beings.  I do, indeed—I have often thought so; and I think too that the mode of bringing them up is strange, they are not half sufficiently guarded from temptations.  Girls are protected as if they were something very frail and silly indeed, while boys are turned loose on the world as if they, of all beings in existence, were the wisest and the least liable to be led astray.

‘I am glad you like Bromsgrove.  I always feel a peculiar satisfaction when I hear of your enjoying yourself, because it proves to me that there is really such a thing as retributive justice even in this life; now you are free, and that while you have still, I hope, many years of vigour and health in which you can enjoy freedom.  Besides, I have another and very egotistical motive for being pleased: it seems that even “a lone woman” can be happy, as well as cherished wives and proud mothers.  I am glad of that—I speculate much on the existence of unmarried and never-to-be married woman now-a-days, and I have already got to the point of considering that there is no more respectable character on this earth than an unmarried woman who makes her own way through life quietly, perseveringly, without support of husband or mother, and who, having attained the age of forty-five or upwards, retains in her possession a well-regulated mind, a disposition to enjoy simple pleasures, fortitude to support inevitable pains, sympathy with the sufferings of others, and willingness to relieve want as far as her means extend.  I wish to send this letter off by to-day’s post, I must therefore conclude in haste.—Believe me, my dear Miss Wooler, yours, most affectionately,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘November 4th, 1845.

‘Dear Ellen,—You do not reproach me in your last, but I fear you must have thought me unkind in being so long without answering you.  The fact is, I had hoped to be able to ask you to come to Haworth.  Branwell seemed to have a prospect of getting employment, and I waited to know the result of his efforts in order to say, “Dear Ellen, come and see p. 135us”; but the place (a secretaryship to a Railroad Committee) is given to another person.  Branwell still remains at home, and while he is here you shall not come.  I am more confirmed in that resolution the more I know of him.  I wish I could say one word to you in his favour, but I cannot, therefore I will hold my tongue.

‘Emily and Anne wish me to tell you that they think it very unlikely for little Flossy to be expected to rear so numerous a family; they think you are quite right in protesting against all the pups being preserved, for, if kept, they will pull their poor little mother to pieces.—Yours faithfully,

‘C. B.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘April 14th, 1846.

‘Dear Ellen,—I assure you I was very glad indeed to get your last note; for when three or four days elapsed after my second despatch to you and I got no answer, I scarcely doubted something was wrong.  It relieved me much to find my apprehensions unfounded.  I return you Miss Ringrose’s notes with thanks.  I always like to read them, they appear to me so true an index of an amiable mind, and one not too conscious of its own worth; beware of awakening in her this consciousness by undue praise.  It is the privilege of simple-hearted, sensible, but not brilliant people, that they can be and do good without comparing their own thoughts and actions too closely with those of other people, and thence drawing strong food for self-appreciation.  Talented people almost always know full well the excellence that is in them.  I wish I could say anything favourable, but how can we be more comfortable so long as Branwell stays at home, and degenerates instead of improving?  It has been lately intimated to him, that he would be received again on the railroad where he was formerly stationed if he would behave more steadily, but he refuses to make an effort; he will not work; and at home he is a drain on every resource—an impediment to all happiness.  But there is no use in complaining.

‘My love to all.  Write again soon.

‘C. B.’

p. 136TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘June 17th, 1846.

‘Dear Ellen,—I was glad to perceive, by the tone of your last letter, that you are beginning to be a little more settled.  We, I am sorry to say, have been somewhat more harassed than usual lately.  The death of Mr. Robinson, which took place about three weeks or a month ago, served Branwell for a pretext to throw all about him into hubbub and confusion with his emotions, etc., etc.  Shortly after came news from all hands that Mr. Robinson had altered his will before he died, and effectually prevented all chance of a marriage between his widow and Branwell, by stipulating that she should not have a shilling if she ever ventured to re-open any communication with him.  Of course he then became intolerable.  To papa he allows rest neither day nor night, and he is continually screwing money out of him, sometimes threatening that he will kill himself if it is withheld from him.  He says Mrs. Robinson is now insane; that her mind is a complete wreck owing to remorse for her conduct towards Mr. Robinson (whose end it appears was hastened by distress of mind) and grief for having lost him.  I do not know how much to believe of what he says, but I fear she is very ill.  Branwell declares that he neither can nor will do anything for himself.  Good situations have been offered him more than once, for which, by a fortnight’s work, he might have qualified himself, but he will do nothing, except drink and make us all wretched.  I had a note from Ellen Taylor a week ago, in which she remarks that letters were received from New Zealand a month since, and that all was well.  I should like to hear from you again soon.  I hope one day to see Brookroyd again, though I think it will not be yet—these are not times of amusement.  Love to all.

‘C. B.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, March 1st, 1847.

‘Dear Ellen,—Branwell has been conducting himself very badly lately.  I expect from the extravagance of his behaviour, p. 137and from mysterious hints he drops (for he never will speak out plainly), that we shall be hearing news of fresh debts contracted by him soon.  The Misses Robinson, who had entirely ceased their correspondence with Anne for half a year after their father’s death, have lately recommenced it.  For a fortnight they sent her a letter almost every day, crammed with warm protestations of endless esteem and gratitude.  They speak with great affection too of their mother, and never make any allusion intimating acquaintance with her errors.  We take special care that Branwell does not know of their writing to Anne.  My health is better: I lay the blame of its feebleness on the cold weather more than on an uneasy mind, for, after all, I have many things to be thankful for.  Write again soon.

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘May 12th, 1847.

‘Dear Ellen,—We shall all be glad to see you on the Thursday or Friday of next week, whichever day will suit you best.  About what time will you be likely to get here, and how will you come?  By coach to Keighley, or by a gig all the way to Haworth?  There must be no impediments now?  I cannot do with them, I want very much to see you.  I hope you will be decently comfortable while you stay.

‘Branwell is quieter now, and for a good reason: he has got to the end of a considerable sum of money, and consequently is obliged to restrict himself in some degree.  You must expect to find him weaker in mind, and a complete rake in appearance.  I have no apprehension of his being at all uncivil to you; on the contrary, he will be as smooth as oil.  I pray for fine weather that we may be able to get out while you stay.  Goodbye for the present.  Prepare for much dulness and monotony.  Give my love to all at Brookroyd.

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘July 28th, 1848.

‘Dear Ellen,—Branwell is the same in conduct as ever.  His constitution seems much shattered.  Papa, and sometimes all of p. 138us, have sad nights with him: he sleeps most of the day, and consequently will lie awake at night.  But has not every house its trial?

‘Write to me very soon, dear Nell, and—Believe me, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

Branwell Brontë died on Sunday, September the 24th, 1848, [138] and the two following letters from Charlotte to her friend Mr. Williams are peculiarly interesting.

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘October 2nd, 1848.

‘My dear Sir,—“We have hurried our dead out of our sight.”  A lull begins to succeed the gloomy tumult of last week.  It is not permitted us to grieve for him who is gone as others grieve for those they lose.  The removal of our only brother must necessarily be regarded by us rather in the light of a mercy than a chastisement.  Branwell was his father’s and his sisters’ pride and hope in boyhood, but since manhood the case has been otherwise.  It has been our lot to see him take a wrong bent; to hope, expect, wait his return to the right path; to know the sickness of hope deferred, the dismay of prayer baffled; to experience despair at last—and now to behold the sudden early obscure close of what might have been a noble career.

‘I do not weep from a sense of bereavement—there is no prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion lost—but for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light.  My brother was a year my junior.  I had aspirations and ambitions for him once, long ago—they have perished mournfully.  Nothing remains of him but a memory p. 139of errors and sufferings.  There is such a bitterness of pity for his life and death, such a yearning for the emptiness of his whole existence as I cannot describe.  I trust time will allay these feelings.

‘My poor father naturally thought more of his only son than of his daughters, and, much and long as he had suffered on his account, he cried out for his loss like David for that of Absalom—my son my son!—and refused at first to be comforted.  And then when I ought to have been able to collect my strength and be at hand to support him, I fell ill with an illness whose approaches I had felt for some time previously, and of which the crisis was hastened by the awe and trouble of the death-scene—the first I had ever witnessed.  The past has seemed to me a strange week.  Thank God, for my father’s sake, I am better now, though still feeble.  I wish indeed I had more general physical strength—the want of it is sadly in my way.  I cannot do what I would do for want of sustained animal spirits and efficient bodily vigour.

‘My unhappy brother never knew what his sisters had done in literature—he was not aware that they had ever published a line.  We could not tell him of our efforts for fear of causing him too deep a pang of remorse for his own time mis-spent, and talents misapplied.  Now he will never know.  I cannot dwell longer on the subject at present—it is too painful.

‘I thank you for your kind sympathy, and pray earnestly that your sons may all do well, and that you may be spared the sufferings my father has gone through.—Yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘Haworth, October 6th, 1848.

‘My dear Sir,—I thank you for your last truly friendly letter, and for the number of Blackwood which accompanied it.  Both arrived at a time when a relapse of illness had depressed me much.  Both did me good, especially the letter.  I have only one fault to find with your expressions of friendship: they make me ashamed, because they seem to imply p. 140that you think better of me than I merit.  I believe you are prone to think too highly of your fellow-creatures in general—to see too exclusively the good points of those for whom you have a regard.  Disappointment must be the inevitable result of this habit.  Believe all men, and women too, to be dust and ashes—a spark of the divinity now and then kindling in the dull heap—that is all.  When I looked on the noble face and forehead of my dead brother (nature had favoured him with a fairer outside, as well as a finer constitution, than his sisters) and asked myself what had made him go ever wrong, tend ever downwards, when he had so many gifts to induce to, and aid in, an upward course, I seemed to receive an oppressive revelation of the feebleness of humanity—of the inadequacy of even genius to lead to true greatness if unaided by religion and principle.  In the value, or even the reality, of these two things he would never believe till within a few days of his end; and then all at once he seemed to open his heart to a conviction of their existence and worth.  The remembrance of this strange change now comforts my poor father greatly.  I myself, with painful, mournful joy, heard him praying softly in his dying moments; and to the last prayer which my father offered up at his bedside he added, “Amen.”  How unusual that word appeared from his lips, of course you, who did not know him, cannot conceive.  Akin to this alteration was that in his feelings towards his relations—all the bitterness seemed gone.

‘When the struggle was over, and a marble calm began to succeed the last dread agony, I felt, as I had never felt before, that there was peace and forgiveness for him in Heaven.  All his errors—to speak plainly, all his vices—seemed nothing to me in that moment: every wrong he had done, every pain he had caused, vanished; his sufferings only were remembered; the wrench to the natural affections only was left.  If man can thus experience total oblivion of his fellow’s imperfections, how much more can the Eternal Being, who made man, forgive His creature?

‘Had his sins been scarlet in their dye, I believe now they are white as wool.  He is at rest, and that comforts us all.  p. 141Long before he quitted this world, life had no happiness for him.

‘Blackwood’s mention of Jane Eyre gratified me much, and will gratify me more, I dare say, when the ferment of other feelings than that of literary ambition shall have a little subsided in my mind.

‘The doctor has told me I must not expect too rapid a restoration to health; but to-day I certainly feel better.  I am thankful to say my father has hitherto stood the storm well; and so have my dear sisters, to whose untiring care and kindness I am chiefly indebted for my present state of convalescence.—Believe me, my dear sir, yours faithfully,

‘C. Brontë.’

The last letter in order of date that I have concerning Branwell is addressed to Ellen Nussey’s sister:—

TO MISS MERCY NUSSEY

‘Haworth, October 25th, 1848.

‘My dear Miss Nussey,—Accept my sincere thanks for your kind letter.  The event to which you allude came upon us with startling suddenness, and was a severe shock to us all.  My poor brother has long had a shaken constitution, and during the summer his appetite had been diminished, and he had seemed weaker, but neither we, nor himself, nor any medical man who was consulted on the case, thought it one of immediate danger.  He was out of doors two days before death, and was only confined to bed one single day.

‘I thank you for your kind sympathy.  Many, under the circumstances, would think our loss rather a relief than otherwise; in truth, we must acknowledge, in all humility and gratitude, that God has greatly tempered judgment with mercy.  But yet, as you doubtless know from experience, the last earthly separation cannot take place between near relatives without the keenest pangs on the part of the survivors.  Every wrong and sin is forgotten then, pity and grief share the heart and the memory between them.  Yet we are not without comfort in our p. 142affliction.  A most propitious change marked the few last days of poor Branwell’s life: his demeanour, his language, his sentiments were all singularly altered and softened.  This change could not be owing to the fear of death, for till within half-an-hour of his decease he seemed unconscious of danger.  In God’s hands we leave him: He sees not as man sees.

‘Papa, I am thankful to say, has borne the event pretty well.  His distress was great at first—to lose an only son is no ordinary trial, but his physical strength has not hitherto failed him, and he has now in a great measure recovered his mental composure; my dear sisters are pretty well also.  Unfortunately, illness attacked me at the crisis when strength was most needed.  I bore up for a day or two, hoping to be better, but got worse.  Fever, sickness, total loss of appetite, and internal pain were the symptoms.  The doctor pronounced it to be bilious fever, but I think it must have been in a mitigated form; it yielded to medicine and care in a few days.  I was only confined to my bed a week, and am, I trust, nearly well now.  I felt it a grievous thing to be incapacitated from action and effort at a time when action and effort were most called for.  The past month seems an overclouded period in my life.

‘Give my best love to Mrs. Nussey and your sister, and—Believe me, my dear Miss Nussey, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

My unhappy brother never knew what his sisters had done in literature—he was not aware that they had ever published a line.

Who that reads these words addressed to Mr. Williams can for a moment imagine that Charlotte is speaking other than the truth?  And yet we have Mr. Grundy writing:

Patrick Brontë declared to me that he wrote a great portion of ‘Wuthering Heights’ himself.

And Mr. George Searle Phillips, [142] with more vivid imagination, describes Branwell holding forth to his friends in the p. 143parlour of the Black Bull at Haworth, upon the genius of his sisters, and upon the respective merits of Jane Eyre and other works.  Mr. Leyland is even so foolish as to compare Branwell’s poetry with Emily’s, to the advantage of the former—which makes further comment impossible.  ‘My unhappy brother never knew what his sisters had done in literature’—these words of Charlotte’s may be taken as final for all who had any doubts concerning the authorship of Wuthering Heights.

p. 144CHAPTER VI: EMILY JANE BRONTË

Emily Brontë is the sphinx of our modern literature.  She came into being in the family of an obscure clergyman, and she went out of it at twenty-nine years of age without leaving behind her one single significant record which was any key to her character or to her mode of thought, save only the one famous novel, Wuthering Heights, and a few poems—some three or four of which will live in our poetic anthologies for ever.  And she made no single friend other than her sister Anne.  With Anne she must have corresponded during the two or three periods of her life when she was separated from that much loved sister; and we may be sure that the correspondence was of a singularly affectionate character.  Charlotte, who never came very near to her in thought or sympathy, although she loved her younger sister so deeply, addressed her in one letter ‘mine own bonnie love’; and it is certain that her own letters to her two sisters, and particularly to Anne, must have been peculiarly tender and in no way lacking in abundant self-revelation.  When Emily and Anne had both gone to the grave, Charlotte, it is probable, carefully destroyed every scrap of their correspondence, and, indeed, of their literary effects; and thus it is that, apart from her books and literary fragments, we know Emily only by two formal letters to her sister’s friend.  Beyond these there is not one scrap of information as to Emily’s outlook upon life.  In infancy she went with Charlotte to p. 145Cowan Bridge, and was described by the governess as ‘a pretty little thing.’  In girlhood she went to Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head; but there, unlike Charlotte, she made no friends.  She and Anne were inseparable when at home, but of what they said to one another there is no record.  The sisters must have differed in many ways.  Anne, gentle and persuasive, grew up like Charlotte, devoted to the Christianity of her father and mother, and entirely in harmony with all the conditions of a parsonage.  It is impossible to think that the author of ‘The Old Stoic’ and ‘Last Lines’ was equally attached to the creeds of the churches; but what Emily thought on religious subjects the world will never know.  Mrs. Gaskell put to Miss Nussey this very question: ‘What was Emily’s religion?’  But Emily was the last person in the world to have spoken to the most friendly of visitors about so sacred a theme.  For a short time, as we know, Emily was in a school at Law Hill near Halifax—a Miss Patchet’s. [145a]  She was, for a still longer period, at the Héger Pensionnat at Brussels.  Mrs. Gaskell’s business was to write the life of Charlotte Brontë and not of her sister Emily; and as a result there is little enough of Emily in Mrs. Gaskell’s book—no record of the Halifax and Brussels life as seen through Emily’s eyes.  Time, however, has brought its revenge.  The cult which started with Mr. Sydney Dobell, and found poetic expression in Mr. Matthew Arnold’s fine lines on her,

                  ‘Whose soul
Knew no fellow for might,
Passion, vehemence, grief,
Daring, since Byron died,’ [145b]

p. 146culminated in an enthusiastic eulogy by Mr. Swinburne, who placed her in the very forefront of English women of genius.

We have said that Emily Brontë is a sphinx whose riddle no amount of research will enable us to read; and this chapter, it may be admitted, adds but little to the longed-for knowledge of an interesting personality.  One scrap of Emily’s handwriting, of a personal character, has indeed come to me—overlooked, I doubt not, by Charlotte when she burnt her sister’s effects.  I have before me a little tin box about two inches long, which one day last year Mr. Nicholls turned out from the bottom of a desk.  It is of a kind in which one might keep pins or beads, certainly of no value whatever apart from its associations.  Within were four little pieces of paper neatly folded to the size of a sixpence.  These papers were covered with handwriting, two of them by Emily, and two by Anne Brontë.  They revealed a pleasant if eccentric arrangement on the part of the sisters, which appears to have been settled upon even after they had passed their twentieth year.  They had agreed to write a kind of reminiscence every four years, to be opened by Emily on her birthday.  The papers, however, tell their own story, and I give first the two which were written in 1841.  Emily writes at Haworth, and Anne from her situation as governess to Mr. Robinson’s children at Thorp Green.  At this time, at any rate, Emily was fairly happy and in excellent health; and although it is five years from the publication of the volume of poems, she is full of literary projects, as is also her sister Anne.  The Gondaland Chronicles, to which reference is made, must remain a mystery for us.  They were doubtless destroyed, with abundant other memorials of Emily, by the heart-broken sister who survived her.  We have plentiful material in the way of childish effort by Charlotte and by Branwell, but there is hardly a scrap in the early handwriting of Emily and Anne.  This chapter would have been more interesting if only one possessed Solala Vernon’s Life by Anne Brontë, or the Gondaland Chronicles by Emily!

p. 147A PAPER to be opened
when Anne is
25 years old,
or my next birthday after
if
all be well.

Emily Jane Brontë.  July the 30th, 1841.

It is Friday evening, near 9 o’clock—wild rainy weather.  I am seated in the dining-room, having just concluded tidying our desk boxes, writing this document.  Papa is in the parlour—aunt upstairs in her room.  She has been reading Blackwood’s Magazine to papa.  Victoria and Adelaide are ensconced in the peat-house.  Keeper is in the kitchen—Hero in his cage.  We are all stout and hearty, as I hope is the case with Charlotte, Branwell, and Anne, of whom the first is at John White, Esq., Upperwood House, Rawdon; the second is at Luddenden Foot; and the third is, I believe, at Scarborough, enditing perhaps a paper corresponding to this.

A scheme is at present in agitation for setting us up in a school of our own; as yet nothing is determined, but I hope and trust it may go on and prosper and answer our highest expectations.  This day four years I wonder whether we shall still be dragging on in our present condition or established to our hearts’ content.  Time will show.

I guess that at the time appointed for the opening of this paper we, i.e. Charlotte, Anne, and I, shall be all merrily seated in our own sitting-room in some pleasant and flourishing seminary, having just gathered in for the midsummer ladyday.  Our debts will be paid off, and we shall have cash in hand to a considerable amount.  Papa, aunt, and Branwell will either p. 148have been or be coming to visit us.  It will be a fine warm, summer evening, very different from this bleak look-out, and Anne and I will perchance slip out into the garden for a few minutes to peruse our papers.  I hope either this or something better will be the case.

The Gondaliand are at present in a threatening state, but there is no open rupture as yet.  All the princes and princesses of the Royalty are at the Palace of Instruction.  I have a good many books on hand, but I am sorry to say that as usual I make small progress with any.  However, I have just made a new regularity paper! and I must verb sap to do great things.  And now I close, sending from far an exhortation of courage, boys! courage, to exiled and harassed Anne, wishing she was here.

Anne, as I have said, writes from Thorp Green.

July the 30th, A.D. 1841.

This is Emily’s birthday.  She has now completed her 23rd year, and is, I believe, at home.  Charlotte is a governess in the family of Mr. White.  Branwell is a clerk in the railroad station at Luddenden Foot, and I am a governess in the family of Mr. Robinson.  I dislike the situation and wish to change it for another.  I am now at Scarborough.  My pupils are gone to bed and I am hastening to finish this before I follow them.

We are thinking of setting up a school of our own, but nothing definite is settled about it yet, and we do not know whether we shall be able to or not.  I hope we shall.  And I wonder what will be our condition and how or where we shall all be on this day four years hence; at which time, all be well, I shall be 25 years and 6 months old, Emily will be 27 years old, Branwell 28 years and 1 month, and Charlotte 29 years and a quarter.  We are now all separate and not likely to meet again for many a weary week, but we are none of us ill p. 149that I know of and all are doing something for our own livelihood except Emily, who, however, is as busy as any of us, and in reality earns her food and raiment as much as we do.

  How little know we what we are
  How less what we may be!

Four years ago I was at school.  Since then I have been a governess at Blake Hall, left it, come to Thorp Green, and seen the sea and York Minster.  Emily has been a teacher at Miss Patchet’s school, and left it.  Charlotte has left Miss Wooler’s, been a governess at Mrs. Sidgwick’s, left her, and gone to Mrs. White’s.  Branwell has given up painting, been a tutor in Cumberland, left it, and become a clerk on the railroad.  Tabby has left us, Martha Brown has come in her place.  We have got Keeper, got a sweet little cat and lost it, and also got a hawk.  Got a wild goose which has flown away, and three tame ones, one of which has been killed.  All these diversities, with many others, are things we did not expect or foresee in the July of 1837.  What will the next four years bring forth?  Providence only knows.  But we ourselves have sustained very little alteration since that time.  I have the same faults that I had then, only I have more wisdom and experience, and a little more self-possession than I then enjoyed.  How will it be when we open this paper and the one Emily has written?  I wonder whether the Gondaliand will still be flourishing, and what will be their condition.  I am now engaged in writing the fourth volume of Solala Vernon’s Life.

For some time I have looked upon 25 as a sort of era in my existence.  It may prove a true presentiment, or it may be only a superstitious fancy; the latter seems most likely, but time will show.

Anne Brontë.

Let us next take up the other two little scraps of paper.  They are dated July the 30th, 1845, or Emily’s twenty-seventh birthday.  Many things have happened, as she says.  p. 150She has been to Brussels, and she has settled definitely at home again.  They are still keenly interested in literature, and we still hear of the Gondals.  There is wonderfully little difference in the tone or spirit of the journals.  The concluding ‘best wishes for this whole house till July the 30th, 1848, and as much longer as may be,’ contain no premonition of coming disaster.  Yet July 1848 was to find Branwell Brontë on the verge of the grave, and Emily on her deathbed.  She died on the 14th of December of that year.

Haworth, Thursday, July 30th, 1845.

My birthday—showery, breezy, cool.  I am twenty-seven years old to-day.  This morning Anne and I opened the papers we wrote four years since, on my twenty-third birthday.  This paper we intend, if all be well, to open on my thirtieth—three years hence, in 1848.  Since the 1841 paper the following events have taken place.  Our school scheme has been abandoned, and instead Charlotte and I went to Brussels on the 8th of February 1842.

Branwell left his place at Luddenden Foot.  C. and I returned from Brussels, November 8th 1842, in consequence of aunt’s death.

Branwell went to Thorp Green as a tutor, where Anne still continued, January 1843.

Charlotte returned to Brussels the same month, and, after staying a year, came back again on New Year’s Day 1844.

Anne left her situation at Thorp Green of her own accord, June 1845.

Anne and I went our first long journey by ourselves together, leaving home on the 30th of June, Monday, sleeping at York, returning to Keighley Tuesday evening, sleeping there and walking home on Wednesday morning.  Though the weather was broken we enjoyed ourselves very much, except during a few hours at Bradford.  And during our p. 151excursion we were, Ronald Macalgin, Henry Angora, Juliet Augusteena, Rosabella Esmaldan, Ella and Julian Egremont, Catharine Navarre, and Cordelia Fitzaphnold, escaping from the palaces of instruction to join the Royalists who are hard driven at present by the victorious Republicans.  The Gondals still flourish bright as ever.  I am at present writing a work on the First War.  Anne has been writing some articles on this, and a book by Henry Sophona.  We intend sticking firm by the rascals as long as they delight us, which I am glad to say they do at present.  I should have mentioned that last summer the school scheme was revived in full vigour.  We had prospectuses printed, despatched letters to all acquaintances imparting our plans, and did our little all; but it was found no go.  Now I don’t desire a school at all, and none of us have any great longing for it.  We have cash enough for our present wants, with a prospect of accumulation.  We are all in decent health, only that papa has a complaint in his eyes, and with the exception of B., who, I hope, will be better and do better hereafter.  I am quite contented for myself: not as idle as formerly, altogether as hearty, and having learnt to make the most of the present and long for the future with the fidgetiness that I cannot do all I wish; seldom or ever troubled with nothing to do, and merely desiring that everybody could be as comfortable as myself and as undesponding, and then we should have a very tolerable world of it.

By mistake I find we have opened the paper on the 31st instead of the 30th.  Yesterday was much such a day as this, but the morning was divine.

Tabby, who was gone in our last paper, is come back, and has lived with us two years and a half; and is in good health.  Martha, who also departed, is here too.  We have got Flossy; got and lost Tiger; lost the hawk Hero, which, with the geese, was given away, and is doubtless dead, for when I came back from Brussels I inquired on all hands and could p. 152hear nothing of him.  Tiger died early last year.  Keeper and Flossy are well, also the canary acquired four years since.  We are now all at home, and likely to be there some time.  Branwell went to Liverpool on Tuesday to stay a week.  Tabby has just been teasing me to turn as formerly to ‘Pilloputate.’  Anne and I should have picked the black currants if it had been fine and sunshiny.  I must hurry off now to my turning and ironing.  I have plenty of work on hands, and writing, and am altogether full of business.  With best wishes for the whole house till 1848, July 30th, and as much longer as may be,—I conclude.

Emily Brontë.

Finally, I give Anne’s last fragment, concerning which silence is essential.  Interpretation of most of the references would be mere guess-work.

Thursday, July the 31st, 1845.  Yesterday was Emily’s birthday, and the time when we should have opened our 1845 paper, but by mistake we opened it to-day instead.  How many things have happened since it was written—some pleasant, some far otherwise.  Yet I was then at Thorp Green, and now I am only just escaped from it.  I was wishing to leave it then, and if I had known that I had four years longer to stay how wretched I should have been; but during my stay I have had some very unpleasant and undreamt-of experience of human nature.  Others have seen more changes.  Charlotte has left Mr. White’s and been twice to Brussels, where she stayed each time nearly a year.  Emily has been there too, and stayed nearly a year.  Branwell has left Luddenden Foot, and been a tutor at Thorp Green, and had much tribulation and ill health.  He was very ill on Thursday, but he went with John Brown to Liverpool, where he now is, I suppose; and we hope he will be better and do better in future.  This is a dismal, cloudy, wet evening.  We have had so far a very cold wet summer.  Charlotte has lately been to Hathersage, in p. 153Derbyshire, on a visit of three weeks to Ellen Nussey.  She is now sitting sewing in the dining-room.  Emily is ironing upstairs.  I am sitting in the dining-room in the rocking-chair before the fire with my feet on the fender.  Papa is in the parlour.  Tabby and Martha are, I think, in the kitchen.  Keeper and Flossy are, I do not know where.  Little Dick is hopping in his cage.  When the last paper was written we were thinking of setting up a school.  The scheme has been dropt, and long after taken up again and dropt again because we could not get pupils.  Charlotte is thinking about getting another situation.  She wishes to go to Paris.  Will she go?  She has let Flossy in, by-the-by, and he is now lying on the sofa.  Emily is engaged in writing the Emperor Julius’s life.  She has read some of it, and I want very much to hear the rest.  She is writing some poetry, too.  I wonder what it is about?  I have begun the third volume of Passages in the Life of an Individual.  I wish I had finished it.  This afternoon I began to set about making my grey figured silk frock that was dyed at Keighley.  What sort of a hand shall I make of it?  E. and I have a great deal of work to do.  When shall we sensibly diminish it?  I want to get a habit of early rising.  Shall I succeed?  We have not yet finished our Gondal Chronicles that we began three years and a half ago.  When will they be done?  The Gondals are at present in a sad state.  The Republicans are uppermost, but the Royalists are not quite overcome.  The young sovereigns, with their brothers and sisters, are still at the Palace of Instruction.  The Unique Society, above half a year ago, were wrecked on a desert island as they were returning from Gaul.  They are still there, but we have not played at them much yet.  The Gondals in general are not in first-rate playing condition.  Will they improve?  I wonder how we shall all be and where and how situated on the thirtieth of July 1848, when, if we are all alive, Emily will be just 30.  I shall p. 154be in my 29th year, Charlotte in her 33rd, and Branwell in his 32nd; and what changes shall we have seen and known; and shall we be much changed ourselves?  I hope not, for the worse at least.  I for my part cannot well be flatter or older in mind than I am now.  Hoping for the best, I conclude.

Anne Brontë.

Exactly fifty years were to elapse before these pieces of writing saw the light.  The interest which must always centre in Emily Brontë amply justifies my publishing a fragment in facsimile; and it has the greater moment on account of the rough drawing which Emily has made of herself and of her dog Keeper.  Emily’s taste for drawing is a pathetic element in her always pathetic life.  I have seen a number of her sketches.  There is one in the possession of Mr. Nicholls of Keeper and Flossy, the former the bull-dog which followed her to the grave, the latter a little King Charlie which one of the Miss Robinsons gave to Anne.  The sketch, however, like most of Emily’s drawings, is technically full of errors.  She was not a born artist, and possibly she had not the best opportunities of becoming one by hard work.  Another drawing before me is of the hawk mentioned in the above fragment; and yet another is of the dog Growler, a predecessor of Keeper, which is not, however, mentioned in the correspondence.  Upon Emily Brontë, the poet, I do not propose to write here.  She left behind her, and Charlotte preserved, a manuscript volume containing the whole of the poems in the two collections of her verse, and there are other poems not yet published.  Here, for example, are some verses in which the Gondals make a slight reappearance.

‘May 21st, 1838.

GLENEDEN’S DREAM.

‘Tell me, whether is it winter?
Say how long my sleep has been.
p. 155Have the woods I left so lovely
Lost their robes of tender green?

‘Is the morning slow in coming?
Is the night time loth to go?
Tell me, are the dreary mountains
Drearier still with drifted snow?

‘“Captive, since thou sawest the forest,
All its leaves have died away,
And another March has woven
Garlands for another May.

‘“Ice has barred the Arctic waters;
Soft Southern winds have set it free;
And once more to deep green valley
Golden flowers might welcome thee.”

‘Watcher in this lonely prison,
Shut from joy and kindly air,
Heaven descending in a vision
Taught my soul to do and bear.

‘It was night, a night of winter,
I lay on the dungeon floor,
And all other sounds were silent—
All, except the river’s roar.

‘Over Death and Desolation,
Fireless hearths, and lifeless homes;
Over orphans’ heartsick sorrows,
Patriot fathers’ bloody tombs;

‘Over friends, that my arms never
Might embrace in love again;
Memory ponderous until madness
Struck its poniard in my brain.

‘Deepest slumbers followed raving,
Yet, methought, I brooded still;
Still I saw my country bleeding,
Dying for a Tyrant’s will.

p. 156‘Not because my bliss was blasted,
Burned within the avenging flame;
Not because my scattered kindred
Died in woe or lived in shame.

‘God doth know I would have given
Every bosom dear to me,
Could that sacrifice have purchased
Tortured Gondal’s liberty!

‘But that at Ambition’s bidding
All her cherished hopes should wane,
That her noblest sons should muster,
Strive and fight and fall in vain.

‘Hut and castle, hall and cottage,
Roofless, crumbling to the ground,
Mighty Heaven, a glad Avenger
Thy eternal Justice found.

‘Yes, the arm that once would shudder
Even to grieve a wounded deer,
I beheld it, unrelenting,
Clothe in blood its sovereign’s prayer.

‘Glorious Dream!  I saw the city
Blazing in Imperial shine,
And among adoring thousands
Stood a man of form divine.

‘None need point the princely victim—
Now he smiles with royal pride!
Now his glance is bright as lightning,
Now the knife is in his side!

‘Ah! I saw how death could darken,
Darken that triumphant eye!
His red heart’s blood drenched my dagger;
My ear drank his dying sigh!

p. 157‘Shadows come! what means this midnight?
O my God, I know it all!
Know the fever dream is over,
Unavenged, the Avengers fall!’

There are, indeed, a few fragments, all written in that tiny handwriting which the girls affected, and bearing various dates from 1833 to 1840.  A new edition of Emily’s poems, will, by virtue of these verses, have a singular interest for her admirers.  With all her gifts as a poet, however, it is by Wuthering Heights that Emily Brontë is best known to the world; and the weirdness and force of that book suggest an inquiry concerning the influences which produced it.  Dr. Wright, in his entertaining book, The Brontës in Ireland, recounts the story of Patrick Brontë’s origin, and insists that it was in listening to her father’s anecdotes of his own Irish experiences that Emily obtained the weird material of Wuthering Heights.  It is not, of course, enough to point out that Dr. Wright’s story of the Irish Brontës is full of contradictions.  A number of tales picked up at random from an illiterate peasantry might very well abound in inconsistencies, and yet contain some measure of truth.  But nothing in Dr. Wright’s narrative is confirmed, save only the fact that Patrick Brontë continued throughout his life in some slight measure of correspondence with his brothers and sisters—a fact rendered sufficiently evident by a perusal of his will.  Dr. Wright tells of many visits to Ireland in order to trace the Brontë traditions to their source; and yet he had not—in his first edition—marked the elementary fact that the registry of births in County Down records the existence of innumerable Bruntys and of not a single Brontë.  Dr. Wright probably made his inquiries with the stories of Emily and Charlotte well in mind.  He sought for similar traditions, and the quick-witted Irish peasantry gave him all that he wanted.  p. 158They served up and embellished the current traditions of the neighbourhood for his benefit, as the peasantry do everywhere for folklore enthusiasts.  Charlotte Brontë’s uncle Hugh, we are told, read the Quarterly Review article upon Jane Eyre, and, armed with a shillelagh, came to England, in order to wreak vengeance upon the writer of the bitter attack.  He landed at Liverpool, walked from Liverpool to Haworth, saw his nieces, who ‘gathered round him,’ and listened to his account of his mission.  He then went to London and made abundant inquiries—but why pursue this ludicrous story further?  In the first place, the Quarterly Review article was published in December 1848—after Emily was dead, and while Anne was dying.  Very soon after the review appeared Charlotte was informed of its authorship, and references to Miss Rigby and the Quarterly are found more than once in her correspondence with Mr. Williams. [158]

This is a lengthy digression from the story of Emily’s life, but it is of moment to discover whether there is any evidence of influences other than those which her Yorkshire home afforded.  I have discussed the matter with Miss Ellen Nussey, and with Mr. Nicholls.  Miss Nussey never, in all her visits to Haworth, heard a single reference to the Irish legends related by Dr. Wright, and firmly believes them to be mythical.  Mr. Nicholls, during the six years that he lived alone at the parsonage with his father-in-law, never heard one single word from Mr. Brontë—who was by no means disposed to reticence—about these stories, and is also of opinion that they are purely legendary.

It has been suggested that Emily would have been guilty almost of a crime to have based the more sordid part of her narrative upon her brother’s transgressions.  This is sheer nonsense.  She wrote Wuthering Heights because she was impelled thereto, and the book, with all its morbid force p. 159and fire, will remain, for all time, as a monument of the most striking genius that nineteenth century womanhood has given us.  It was partly her life in Yorkshire—the local colour was mainly derived from her brief experience as a governess at Halifax—but it was partly, also, the German fiction which she had devoured during the Brussels period, that inspired Wuthering Heights.

Here, however, are glimpses of Emily Brontë on a more human side.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘March 25th, 1844.

‘Dear Nell,—I got home safely, and was not too much tired on arriving at Haworth.  I feel rather better to-day than I have been, and in time I hope to regain more strength.  I found Emily and Papa well, and a letter from Branwell intimating that he and Anne are pretty well too.  Emily is much obliged to you for the flower seeds.  She wishes to know if the Sicilian pea and crimson corn-flower are hardy flowers, or if they are delicate, and should be sown in warm and sheltered situations?  Tell me also if you went to Mrs. John Swain’s on Friday, and if you enjoyed yourself; talk to me, in short, as you would do if we were together.  Good-morning, dear Nell; I shall say no more to you at present.

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘April 5th, 1844.

‘Dear Nell,—We were all very glad to get your letter this morning.  We, I say, as both Papa and Emily were anxious to hear of the safe arrival of yourself and the little varmint. [159]  As you conjecture, Emily and I set-to to shirt-making the very day after you left, and we have stuck to it pretty closely ever since.  We miss your society at least as much as you miss ours, depend upon it; would that you were within calling distance.  Be sure you write to me.  I shall expect another letter on Thursday—p. 160don’t disappoint me.  Best regards to your mother and sisters.—Yours, somewhat irritated,

‘C. Brontë.’

Earlier than this Emily had herself addressed a letter to Miss Nussey, and, indeed, the two letters from Emily Brontë to Ellen Nussey which I print here are, I imagine, the only letters of Emily’s in existence.  Mr. Nicholls informs me that he has never seen a letter in Emily’s handwriting.  The following letter is written during Charlotte’s second stay in Brussels, and at a time when Ellen Nussey contemplated joining her there—a project never carried out.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘May 12, 1843.

‘Dear Miss Nussey,—I should be wanting in common civility if I did not thank you for your kindness in letting me know of an opportunity to send postage free.

‘I have written as you directed, though if next Tuesday means to-morrow I fear it will be too late.  Charlotte has never mentioned a word about coming home.  If you would go over for half-a-year, perhaps you might be able to bring her back with you—otherwise, she might vegetate there till the age of Methuselah for mere lack of courage to face the voyage.

‘All here are in good health; so was Anne according to her last account.  The holidays will be here in a week or two, and then, if she be willing, I will get her to write you a proper letter, a feat that I have never performed.—With love and good wishes,

‘Emily J. Brontë.’

The next letter is written at the time that Charlotte is staying with her friend at Mr. Henry Nussey’s house at Hathersage in Derbyshire.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, February 9th, 1846.

‘Dear Miss Nussey,—I fancy this note will be too late to decide one way or other with respect to Charlotte’s stay.  Yours p. 161only came this morning (Wednesday), and unless mine travels faster you will not receive it till Friday.  Papa, of course, misses Charlotte, and will be glad to have her back.  Anne and I ditto; but as she goes from home so seldom, you may keep her a day or two longer, if your eloquence is equal to the task of persuading her—that is, if she still be with you when you get this permission.  Love from Anne.—Yours truly,

‘Emily J. Brontë.’

Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, ‘by Ellis and Acton Bell,’ were published together in three volumes in 1847.  The former novel occupied two volumes, and the latter one.  By a strange freak of publishing, the book was issued as Wuthering Heights, vol. I. and II., and Agnes Grey, vol. III., in deference, it must be supposed, to the passion for the three volume novel.  Charlotte refers to the publication in the next letter, which contained as inclosure the second preface to Jane Eyre—the preface actually published. [161]  An earlier preface, entitled ‘A Word to the Quarterly,’ was cancelled.

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘December 21st, 1847.

‘Dear Sir,—I am, for my own part, dissatisfied with the preface I sent—I fear it savours of flippancy.  If you see no objection I should prefer substituting the inclosed.  It is rather more lengthy, but it expresses something I have long wished to express.

‘Mr. Smith is kind indeed to think of sending me The Jar of Honey.  When I receive the book I will write to him.  I cannot thank you sufficiently for your letters, and I can give you but a faint idea of the pleasure they afford me; they seem to introduce such light and life to the torpid retirement where we live like dormice.  But, understand this distinctly, you must never write to me except when you have both leisure p. 162and inclination.  I know your time is too fully occupied and too valuable to be often at the service of any one individual.

‘You are not far wrong in your judgment respecting Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey.  Ellis has a strong, original mind, full of strange though sombre power.  When he writes poetry that power speaks in language at once condensed, elaborated, and refined, but in prose it breaks forth in scenes which shock more than they attract.  Ellis will improve, however, because he knows his defects.  Agnes Grey is the mirror of the mind of the writer.  The orthography and punctuation of the books are mortifying to a degree: almost all the errors that were corrected in the proof-sheets appear intact in what should have been the fair copies.  If Mr. Newby always does business in this way, few authors would like to have him for their publisher a second time.—Believe me, dear sir, yours respectfully,

‘C. Bell.’

When Jane Eyre was performed at a London theatre—and it has been more than once adapted for the stage, and performed many hundreds of times in England and America—Charlotte Brontë wrote to her friend Mr. Williams as follows:—

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘February 5th, 1848.

‘Dear Sir,—A representation of Jane Eyre at a minor theatre would no doubt be a rather afflicting spectacle to the author of that work.  I suppose all would be wofully exaggerated and painfully vulgarised by the actors and actresses on such a stage.  What, I cannot help asking myself, would they make of Mr. Rochester?  And the picture my fancy conjures up by way of reply is a somewhat humiliating one.  What would they make of Jane Eyre?  I see something very pert and very affected as an answer to that query.

‘Still, were it in my power, I should certainly make a point of being myself a witness of the exhibition.  Could I go quietly and alone, I undoubtedly should go; I should endeavour to endure both rant and whine, strut and grimace, for the sake of the useful observations to be collected in such a scene.

p. 163‘As to whether I wish you to go, that is another question.  I am afraid I have hardly fortitude enough really to wish it.  One can endure being disgusted with one’s own work, but that a friend should share the repugnance is unpleasant.  Still, I know it would interest me to hear both your account of the exhibition and any ideas which the effect of the various parts on the spectators might suggest to you.  In short, I should like to know what you would think, and to hear what you would say on the subject.  But you must not go merely to satisfy my curiosity; you must do as you think proper.  Whatever you decide on will content me: if you do not go, you will be spared a vulgarising impression of the book; if you do go, I shall perhaps gain a little information—either alternative has its advantage. [163]

‘I am glad to hear that the second edition is selling, for the sake of Messrs. Smith & Elder.  I rather feared it would remain on hand, and occasion loss.  Wuthering Heights it appears is selling too, and consequently Mr. Newby is getting into marvellously good tune with his authors.—I remain, my dear sir, yours faithfully,

‘Currer Bell.’

I print the above letter here because of its sequel, which has something to say of Ellis—of Emily Brontë.

p. 164TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘February 15th, 1848.

‘Dear Sir,—Your letter, as you may fancy, has given me something to think about.  It has presented to my mind a curious picture, for the description you give is so vivid, I seem to realise it all.  I wanted information and I have got it.  You have raised the veil from a corner of your great world—your London—and have shown me a glimpse of what I might call loathsome, but which I prefer calling strange.  Such, then, is a sample of what amuses the metropolitan populace!  Such is a view of one of their haunts!

‘Did I not say that I would have gone to this theatre and witnessed this exhibition if it had been in my power?  What absurdities people utter when they speak of they know not what!

‘You must try now to forget entirely what you saw.

‘As to my next book, I suppose it will grow to maturity in p. 165time, as grass grows or corn ripens; but I cannot force it.  It makes slow progress thus far: it is not every day, nor even every week that I can write what is worth reading; but I shall (if not hindered by other matters) be industrious when the humour comes, and in due time I hope to see such a result as I shall not be ashamed to offer you, my publishers, and the public.

‘Have you not two classes of writers—the author and the bookmaker?  And is not the latter more prolific than the former?  Is he not, indeed, wonderfully fertile; but does the public, or the publisher even, make much account of his productions?  Do not both tire of him in time?

‘Is it not because authors aim at a style of living better suited to merchants, professed gain-seekers, that they are often compelled to degenerate to mere bookmakers, and to find the great stimulus of their pen in the necessity of earning money?  If they were not ashamed to be frugal, might they not be more independent?

‘I should much—very much—like to take that quiet view of the “great world” you allude to, but I have as yet won no right to give myself such a treat: it must be for some future day—when, I don’t know.  Ellis, I imagine, would soon turn aside from the spectacle in disgust.  I do not think he admits it as his creed that “the proper study of mankind is man”—at least not the artificial man of cities.  In some points I consider Ellis somewhat of a theorist: now and then he broaches ideas which strike my sense as much more daring and original than practical; his reason may be in advance of mine, but certainly it often travels a different road.  I should say Ellis will not be seen in his full strength till he is seen as an essayist.

‘I return to you the note inclosed under your cover, it is from the editor of the Berwick Warder; he wants a copy of Jane Eyre to review.

‘With renewed thanks for your continued goodness to me,—I remain, my dear sir, yours faithfully,

‘Currer Bell.’

A short time afterwards the illness came to Emily from which she died the same year.  Branwell died in September p. 1661848, and a month later Charlotte writes with a heart full of misgivings:—

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘October 29th, 1848.

‘Dear Ellen,—I am sorry you should have been uneasy at my not writing to you ere this, but you must remember it is scarcely a week since I received your last, and my life is not so varied that in the interim much should have occurred worthy of mention.  You insist that I should write about myself; this puts me in straits, for I really have nothing interesting to say about myself.  I think I have now nearly got over the effects of my late illness, and am almost restored to my normal condition of health.  I sometimes wish that it was a little higher, but we ought to be content with such blessings as we have, and not pine after those that are out of our reach.  I feel much more uneasy about my sisters than myself just now.  Emily’s cold and cough are very obstinate.  I fear she has pain in the chest, and I sometimes catch a shortness in her breathing, when she has moved at all quickly.  She looks very, very thin and pale.  Her reserved nature occasions me great uneasiness of mind.  It is useless to question her—you get no answers.  It is still more useless to recommend remedies—they are never adopted.  Nor can I shut my eyes to the fact of Anne’s great delicacy of constitution.  The late sad event has, I feel, made me more apprehensive than common.  I cannot help feeling much depressed sometimes.  I try to leave all in God’s hands; to trust in His goodness; but faith and resignation are difficult to practise under some circumstances.  The weather has been most unfavourable for invalids of late: sudden changes of temperature, and cold penetrating winds have been frequent here.  Should the atmosphere become settled, perhaps a favourable effect might be produced on the general health, and those harassing coughs and colds be removed.  Papa has not quite escaped, but he has, so far, stood it out better than any of us.  You must not mention my going to Brookroyd this winter.  I could not, and would not, leave home on any account.  I am p. 167truly sorry to hear of Miss Heald’s serious illness, it seems to me she has been for some years out of health now.  These things make one feel as well as know, that this world is not our abiding-place.  We should not knit human ties too close, or clasp human affections too fondly.  They must leave us, or we must leave them, one day.  Good-bye for the present.  God restore health and strength to you and to all who need it.—Yours faithfully,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘November 2nd, 1848.

‘My dear Sir,—I have received, since I last wrote to you, two papers, the Standard of Freedom and the Morning Herald, both containing notices of the Poems; which notices, I hope, will at least serve a useful purpose to Mr. Smith in attracting public attention to the volume.  As critiques, I should have thought more of them had they more fully recognised Ellis Bell’s merits; but the lovers of abstract poetry are few in number.

‘Your last letter was very welcome, it was written with so kind an intention: you made it so interesting in order to divert my mind.  I should have thanked you for it before now, only that I kept waiting for a cheerful day and mood in which to address you, and I grieve to say the shadow which has fallen on our quiet home still lingers round it.  I am better, but others are ill now.  Papa is not well, my sister Emily has something like slow inflammation of the lungs, and even our old servant, who lived with us nearly a quarter of a century, is suffering under serious indisposition.

‘I would fain hope that Emily is a little better this evening, but it is difficult to ascertain this.  She is a real stoic in illness: she neither seeks nor will accept sympathy.  To put any questions, to offer any aid, is to annoy; she will not yield a step before pain or sickness till forced; not one of her ordinary avocations will she voluntarily renounce.  You must look on and see her do what she is unfit to do, and not dare to say a word—a painful necessity for those to whom her health and existence are as precious as the life in their veins.  When she is ill there seems to p. 168be no sunshine in the world for me.  The tie of sister is near and dear indeed, and I think a certain harshness in her powerful and peculiar character only makes me cling to her more.  But this is all family egotism (so to speak)—excuse it, and, above all, never allude to it, or to the name Emily, when you write to me.  I do not always show your letters, but I never withhold them when they are inquired after.

‘I am sorry I cannot claim for the name Brontë the honour of being connected with the notice in the Bradford Observer.  That paper is in the hands of dissenters, and I should think the best articles are usually written by one or two intelligent dissenting ministers in the town.  Alexander Harris [168a] is fortunate in your encouragement, as Currer Bell once was.  He has not forgotten the first letter he received from you, declining indeed his MS. of The Professor, but in terms so different from those in which the rejections of the other publishers had been expressed—with so much more sense and kind feeling, it took away the sting of disappointment and kindled new hope in his mind.

‘Currer Bell might expostulate with you again about thinking too well of him, but he refrains; he prefers acknowledging that the expression of a fellow creature’s regard—even if more than he deserves—does him good: it gives him a sense of content.  Whatever portion of the tribute is unmerited on his part, would, he is aware, if exposed to the test of daily acquaintance, disperse like a broken bubble, but he has confidence that a portion, however minute, of solid friendship would remain behind, and that portion he reckons amongst his treasures.

‘I am glad, by-the-bye, to hear that Madeline is come out at last, and was happy to see a favourable notice of that work and of The Three Paths in the Morning Herald.  I wish Miss Kavanagh all success. [168b]

p. 169‘Trusting that Mrs. Williams’s health continues strong, and that your own and that of all your children is satisfactory, for without health there is little comfort,—I am, my dear sir, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

The next letter gives perhaps the most interesting glimpse of Emily that has been afforded us.

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘November 22nd, 1848.

‘My dear Sir,—I put your most friendly letter into Emily’s hands as soon as I had myself perused it, taking care, however, not to say a word in favour of homœopathy—that would not have answered.  It is best usually to leave her to form her own judgment, and especially not to advocate the side you wish her to favour; if you do, she is sure to lean in the opposite direction, and ten to one will argue herself into non-compliance.  Hitherto she has refused medicine, rejected medical advice; no reasoning, no entreaty, has availed to induce her to see a physician.  After reading your letter she said, “Mr. Williams’s intention was kind and good, but he was under a delusion: Homœopathy was only another form of quackery.”  Yet she may reconsider this opinion and come to a different conclusion; her second thoughts are often the best.

‘The North American Review is worth reading; there is no mincing the matter there.  What a bad set the Bells must be!  What appalling books they write!  To-day, as Emily appeared a little easier, I thought the Review would amuse her, so I read it aloud to her and Anne.  As I sat between them at our quiet but now somewhat melancholy fireside, I studied the two ferocious authors.  Ellis, the “man of uncommon talents, but dogged, brutal, and morose,” sat leaning back in his easy chair drawing his impeded breath as he best could, and looking, alas! piteously pale and wasted; it is not his wont to laugh, but he smiled half-amused and half in scorn as he listened.  Acton p. 170was sewing, no emotion ever stirs him to loquacity, so he only smiled too, dropping at the same time a single word of calm amazement to hear his character so darkly portrayed.  I wonder what the reviewer would have thought of his own sagacity could he have beheld the pair as I did.  Vainly, too, might he have looked round for the masculine partner in the firm of “Bell & Co.”  How I laugh in my sleeve when I read the solemn assertions that Jane Eyre was written in partnership, and that it “bears the marks of more than one mind and one sex.”

‘The wise critics would certainly sink a degree in their own estimation if they knew that yours or Mr. Smith’s was the first masculine hand that touched the MS. of Jane Eyre, and that till you or he read it no masculine eye had scanned a line of its contents, no masculine ear heard a phrase from its pages.  However, the view they take of the matter rather pleases me than otherwise.  If they like, I am not unwilling they should think a dozen ladies and gentlemen aided at the compilation of the book.  Strange patchwork it must seem to them—this chapter being penned by Mr., and that by Miss or Mrs. Bell; that character or scene being delineated by the husband, that other by the wife!  The gentleman, of course, doing the rough work, the lady getting up the finer parts.  I admire the idea vastly.

‘I have read Madeline.  It is a fine pearl in simple setting.  Julia Kavanagh has my esteem; I would rather know her than many far more brilliant personages.  Somehow my heart leans more to her than to Eliza Lynn, for instance.  Not that I have read either Amymone or Azeth, but I have seen extracts from them which I found it literally impossible to digest.  They presented to my imagination Lytton Bulwer in petticoats—an overwhelming vision.  By-the-bye, the American critic talks admirable sense about Bulwer—candour obliges me to confess that.

‘I must abruptly bid you good-bye for the present.—Yours sincerely,

‘Currer Bell.’

p. 171TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘December 7th, 1848.

‘My dear Sir,—I duly received Dr. Curie’s work on Homœopathy, and ought to apologise for having forgotten to thank you for it.  I will return it when I have given it a more attentive perusal than I have yet had leisure to do.  My sister has read it, but as yet she remains unshaken in her former opinion: she will not admit there can be efficacy in such a system.  Were I in her place, it appears to me that I should be glad to give it a trial, confident that it can scarcely do harm and might do good.

‘I can give no favourable report of Emily’s state.  My father is very despondent about her.  Anne and I cherish hope as well as we can, but her appearance and her symptoms tend to crush that feeling.  Yet I argue that the present emaciation, cough, weakness, shortness of breath are the results of inflammation, now, I trust, subsided, and that with time these ailments will gradually leave her.  But my father shakes his head and speaks of others of our family once similarly afflicted, for whom he likewise persisted in hoping against hope, and who are now removed where hope and fear fluctuate no more.  There were, however, differences between their case and hers—important differences I think.  I must cling to the expectation of her recovery, I cannot renounce it.

‘Much would I give to have the opinion of a skilful professional man.  It is easy, my dear sir, to say there is nothing in medicine, and that physicians are useless, but we naturally wish to procure aid for those we love when we see them suffer; most painful is it to sit still, look on, and do nothing.  Would that my sister added to her many great qualities the humble one of tractability!  I have again and again incurred her displeasure by urging the necessity of seeking advice, and I fear I must yet incur it again and again.  Let me leave the subject; I have no right thus to make you a sharer in our sorrow.

‘I am indeed surprised that Mr. Newby should say that he is to publish another work by Ellis and Acton Bell.  Acton has had quite enough of him.  I think I have before intimated that that p. 172author never more intends to have Mr. Newby for a publisher.  Not only does he seem to forget that engagements made should be fulfilled, but by a system of petty and contemptible manœuvring he throws an air of charlatanry over the works of which he has the management.  This does not suit the “Bells”: they have their own rude north-country ideas of what is delicate, honourable, and gentlemanlike.

‘Newby’s conduct in no sort corresponds with these notions; they have found him—I will not say what they have found him.  Two words that would exactly suit him are at my pen point, but I shall not take the trouble to employ them.

‘Ellis Bell is at present in no condition to trouble himself with thoughts either of writing or publishing.  Should it please Heaven to restore his health and strength, he reserves to himself the right of deciding whether or not Mr. Newby has forfeited every claim to his second work.

‘I have not yet read the second number of Pendennis.  The first I thought rich in indication of ease, resource, promise; but it is not Thackeray’s way to develop his full power all at once.  Vanity Fair began very quietly—it was quiet all through, but the stream as it rolled gathered a resistless volume and force.  Such, I doubt not, will be the case with Pendennis.

‘You must forget what I said about Eliza Lynn.  She may be the best of human beings, and I am but a narrow-minded fool to express prejudice against a person I have never seen.

‘Believe me, my dear sir, in haste, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

The next four letters speak for themselves.

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘December 9th, 1848.

‘My dear Sir,—Your letter seems to relieve me from a difficulty and to open my way.  I know it would be useless to consult Drs. Elliotson or Forbes: my sister would not see the most skilful physician in England if he were brought to her just now, nor would she follow his prescription.  With regard to p. 173Homœopathy, she has at least admitted that it cannot do much harm; perhaps if I get the medicines she may consent to try them; at any rate, the experiment shall be made.

‘Not knowing Dr. Epps’s address, I send the inclosed statement of her case through your hands. [173]

‘I deeply feel both your kindness and Mr. Smith’s in thus interesting yourselves in what touches me so nearly.—Believe me, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘December 15th, 1848.

‘My dear Ellen,—I mentioned your coming here to Emily as a mere suggestion, with the faint hope that the prospect might cheer her, as she really esteems you perhaps more than p. 174any other person out of this house.  I found, however, it would not do; any, the slightest excitement or putting out of the way is not to be thought of, and indeed I do not think the journey in this unsettled weather, with the walk from Keighley and walk back, at all advisable for yourself.  Yet I should have liked to see you, and so would Anne.  Emily continues much the same; yesterday I thought her a little better, but to-day she is not so well.  I hope still, for I must hope—she is dear to me as life.  If I let the faintness of despair reach my heart I shall become worthless.  The attack was, I believe, in the first place, inflammation of the lungs; it ought to have been met promptly in time.  She is too intractable.  I do wish I knew her state and feelings more clearly.  The fever is not so high as it was, but the pain in the side, the cough, the emaciation are there still.

‘Remember me kindly to all at Brookroyd, and believe me, yours faithfully,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘December 21st, 1848.

‘My dear Ellen,—Emily suffers no more from pain or weakness now.  She will never suffer more in this world.  She is gone, after a hard, short conflict.  She died on Tuesday, the very day I wrote to you.  I thought it very possible she might be with us still for weeks, and a few hours afterwards she was in eternity.  Yes, there is no Emily in time or on earth now.  Yesterday we put her poor, wasted, mortal frame quietly under the church pavement.  We are very calm at present.  Why should we be otherwise?  The anguish of seeing her suffer is over; the spectacle of the pains of death is gone by; the funeral day is past.  We feel she is at peace.  No need now to tremble for the hard frost and the keen wind.  Emily does not feel them.  She died in a time of promise.  We saw her taken from life in its prime.  But it is God’s will, and the place where she is gone is better than she has left.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘December 25th, 1848.

‘My dear Sir,—I will write to you more at length when my p. 175heart can find a little rest—now I can only thank you very briefly for your letter, which seemed to me eloquent in its sincerity.

‘Emily is nowhere here now, her wasted mortal remains are taken out of the house.  We have laid her cherished head under the church aisle beside my mother’s, my two sisters’—dead long ago—and my poor, hapless brother’s.  But a small remnant of the race is left—so my poor father thinks.

‘Well, the loss is ours, not hers, and some sad comfort I take, as I hear the wind blow and feel the cutting keenness of the frost, in knowing that the elements bring her no more suffering; their severity cannot reach her grave; her fever is quieted, her restlessness soothed, her deep, hollow cough is hushed for ever; we do not hear it in the night nor listen for it in the morning; we have not the conflict of the strangely strong spirit and the fragile frame before us—relentless conflict—once seen, never to be forgotten.  A dreary calm reigns round us, in the midst of which we seek resignation.

‘My father and my sister Anne are far from well.  As for me, God has hitherto most graciously sustained me; so far I have felt adequate to bear my own burden and even to offer a little help to others.  I am not ill; I can get through daily duties, and do something towards keeping hope and energy alive in our mourning household.  My father says to me almost hourly, “Charlotte, you must bear up, I shall sink if you fail me”; these words, you can conceive, are a stimulus to nature.  The sight, too, of my sister Anne’s very still but deep sorrow wakens in me such fear for her that I dare not falter.  Somebody must cheer the rest.

‘So I will not now ask why Emily was torn from us in the fulness of our attachment, rooted up in the prime of her own days, in the promise of her powers; why her existence now lies like a field of green corn trodden down, like a tree in full bearing struck at the root.  I will only say, sweet is rest after labour and calm after tempest, and repeat again and again that Emily knows that now.—Yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

p. 176And then there are these last pathetic references to the beloved sister.

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘January 2nd, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—Untoward circumstances come to me, I think, less painfully than pleasant ones would just now.  The lash of the Quarterly, however severely applied, cannot sting—as its praise probably would not elate me.  Currer Bell feels a sorrowful independence of reviews and reviewers; their approbation might indeed fall like an additional weight on his heart, but their censure has no bitterness for him.

‘My sister Anne sends the accompanying answer to the letter received through you the other day; will you be kind enough to post it?  She is not well yet, nor is papa, both are suffering under severe influenza colds.  My letters had better be brief at present—they cannot be cheerful.  I am, however, still sustained.  While looking with dismay on the desolation sickness and death have wrought in our home, I can combine with awe of God’s judgments a sense of gratitude for his mercies.  Yet life has become very void, and hope has proved a strange traitor; when I shall again be able to put confidence in her suggestions, I know not: she kept whispering that Emily would not, could not die, and where is she now?  Out of my reach, out of my world—torn from me.—Yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

‘March 3rd, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—Hitherto, I have always forgotten to acknowledge the receipt of the parcel from Cornhill.  It came at a time when I could not open it nor think of it; its contents are still a mystery.  I will not taste, till I can enjoy them.  I looked at it the other day.  It reminded me too sharply of the time when the first parcel arrived last October: Emily was then beginning to be ill—the opening of the parcel and examination of the books cheered her; their perusal occupied her for many a weary day.  The very evening before her last morning dawned I read to her one of Emerson’s essays.  I read on, till I found p. 177she was not listening—I thought to recommence next day.  Next day, the first glance at her face told me what would happen before night-fall.

‘C. Brontë.’

‘November 19th, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—I am very sorry to hear that Mr. Taylor’s illness has proved so much more serious than was anticipated, but I do hope he is now better.  That he should be quite well cannot be as yet expected, for I believe rheumatic fever is a complaint slow to leave the system it has invaded.

‘Now that I have almost formed the resolution of coming to London, the thought begins to present itself to me under a pleasant aspect.  At first it was sad; it recalled the last time I went and with whom, and to whom I came home, and in what dear companionship I again and again narrated all that had been seen, heard, and uttered in that visit.  Emily would never go into any sort of society herself, and whenever I went I could on my return communicate to her a pleasure that suited her, by giving the distinct faithful impression of each scene I had witnessed.  When pressed to go, she would sometimes say, “What is the use?  Charlotte will bring it all home to me.”  And indeed I delighted to please her thus.  My occupation is gone now.

‘I shall come to be lectured.  I perceive you are ready with animadversion; you are not at all well satisfied on some points, so I will open my ears to hear, nor will I close my heart against conviction; but I forewarn you, I have my own doctrines, not acquired, but innate, some that I fear cannot be rooted up without tearing away all the soil from which they spring, and leaving only unproductive rock for new seed.

‘I have read the Caxtons, I have looked at Fanny Hervey.  I think I will not write what I think of either—should I see you I will speak it.

‘Take a hundred, take a thousand of such works and weigh them in the balance against a page of Thackeray.  I hope Mr. Thackeray is recovered.

‘The Sun, the Morning Herald, and the Critic came this p. 178morning.  None of them express disappointment from Shirley, or on the whole compare her disadvantageously with Jane.  It strikes me that those worthies—the Athenæum, Spectator, Economist, made haste to be first with their notices that they might give the tone; if so, their manœuvre has not yet quite succeeded.

‘The Critic, our old friend, is a friend still.  Why does the pulse of pain beat in every pleasure?  Ellis and Acton Bell are referred to, and where are they?  I will not repine.  Faith whispers they are not in those graves to which imagination turns—the feeling, thinking, the inspired natures are beyond earth, in a region more glorious.  I believe them blessed.  I think, I will think, my loss has been their gain.  Does it weary you that I refer to them?  If so, forgive me.—Yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.

‘Before closing this I glanced over the letter inclosed under your cover.  Did you read it?  It is from a lady, not quite an old maid, but nearly one, she says; no signature or date; a queer, but good-natured production, it made me half cry, half laugh.  I am sure Shirley has been exciting enough for her, and too exciting.  I cannot well reply to the letter since it bears no address, and I am glad—I should not know what to say.  She is not sure whether I am a gentleman or not, but I fancy she thinks so.  Have you any idea who she is?  If I were a gentleman and like my heroes, she suspects she should fall in love with me.  She had better not.  It would be a pity to cause such a waste of sensibility.  You and Mr. Smith would not let me announce myself as a single gentleman of mature age in my preface, but if you had permitted it, a great many elderly spinsters would have been pleased.’

The last words that I have to say concerning Emily are contained in a letter to me from Miss Ellen Nussey.

‘So very little is known of Emily Brontë,’ she writes, ‘that every little detail awakens an interest.  Her extreme reserve seemed impenetrable, yet she was intensely lovable; she invited p. 179confidence in her moral power.  Few people have the gift of looking and smiling as she could look and smile.  One of her rare expressive looks was something to remember through life, there was such a depth of soul and feeling, and yet a shyness of revealing herself—a strength of self-containment seen in no other.  She was in the strictest sense a law unto herself, and a heroine in keeping to her law.  She and gentle Anne were to be seen twined together as united statues of power and humility.  They were to be seen with their arms lacing each other in their younger days whenever their occupations permitted their union.  On the top of a moor or in a deep glen Emily was a child in spirit for glee and enjoyment; or when thrown entirely on her own resources to do a kindness, she could be vivacious in conversation and enjoy giving pleasure.  A spell of mischief also lurked in her on occasions when out on the moors.  She enjoyed leading Charlotte where she would not dare to go of her own free-will.  Charlotte had a mortal dread of unknown animals, and it was Emily’s pleasure to lead her into close vicinity, and then to tell her of how and of what she had done, laughing at her horror with great amusement.  If Emily wanted a book she might have left in the sitting-room she would dart in again without looking at any one, especially if any guest were present.  Among the curates, Mr. Weightman was her only exception for any conventional courtesy.  The ability with which she took up music was amazing; the style, the touch, and the expression was that of a professor absorbed heart and soul in his theme.  The two dogs, Keeper and Flossy, were always in quiet waiting by the side of Emily and Anne during their breakfast of Scotch oatmeal and milk, and always had a share handed down to them at the close of the meal.  Poor old Keeper, Emily’s faithful friend and worshipper, seemed to understand her like a human being.  One evening, when the four friends were sitting closely round the fire in the sitting-room, Keeper forced himself in between Charlotte and Emily and mounted himself on Emily’s lap; finding the space too limited for his comfort he pressed himself forward on to the guest’s knees, making himself quite comfortable.  Emily’s p. 180heart was won by the unresisting endurance of the visitor, little guessing that she herself, being in close contact, was the inspiring cause of submission to Keeper’s preference.  Sometimes Emily would delight in showing off Keeper—make him frantic in action, and roar with the voice of a lion.  It was a terrifying exhibition within the walls of an ordinary sitting-room.  Keeper was a solemn mourner at Emily’s funeral and never recovered his cheerfulness.’

p. 181CHAPTER VII: ANNE BRONTË

It can scarcely be doubted that Anne Brontë’s two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, would have long since fallen into oblivion but for the inevitable association with the romances of her two greater sisters.  While this may he taken for granted, it is impossible not to feel, even at the distance of half a century, a sense of Anne’s personal charm.  Gentleness is a word always associated with her by those who knew her.  When Mr. Nicholls saw what professed to be a portrait of Anne in a magazine article, he wrote: ‘What an awful caricature of the dear, gentle Anne Brontë!’  Mr. Nicholls has a portrait of Anne in his possession, drawn by Charlotte, which he pronounces to be an admirable likeness, and this does convey the impression of a sweet and gentle nature.

Anne, as we have seen, was taken in long clothes from Thornton to Haworth.  Her godmother was a Miss Outhwaite, a fact I learn from an inscription in Anne’s Book of Common Prayer.  ‘Miss Outhwaite to her goddaughter, Anne Brontë, July 13th, 1827.’  Miss Outhwaite was not forgetful of her goddaughter, for by her will she left Anne £200.

There is a sampler worked by Anne, bearing date January 23rd, 1830, and there is a later book than the Prayer Book, with Anne’s name in it, and, as might be expected, it is a good-conduct prize.  Prize for good conduct presented to Miss A. Brontë with Miss Wooler’s kind love, p. 182Roe Head, Dec. 14th, 1836, is the inscription in a copy of Watt On the Improvement of the Mind.

Apart from the correspondence we know little more than this—that Anne was the least assertive of the three sisters, and that she was more distinctly a general favourite.  We have Charlotte’s own word for it that even the curates ventured upon ‘sheep’s eyes’ at Anne.  We know all too little of her two experiences as governess, first at Blake Hall with Mrs. Ingham, and later at Thorp Green with Mrs. Robinson.  The painful episode of Branwell’s madness came to disturb her sojourn at the latter place, but long afterwards her old pupils, the Misses Robinson, called to see her at Haworth; and one of them, who became a Mrs. Clapham of Keighley, always retained the most kindly memories of her gentle governess.

With the exception of these two uncomfortable episodes as governess, Anne would seem to have had no experience of the larger world.  Even before Anne’s death, Charlotte had visited Brussels, London, and Hathersage (in Derbyshire).  Anne never, I think, set foot out of her native county, although she was the only one of her family to die away from home.  Of her correspondence I have only the two following letters:—

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, October 4th, 1847.

‘My dear Miss Nussey,—Many thanks to you for your unexpected and welcome epistle.  Charlotte is well, and meditates writing to you.  Happily for all parties the east wind no longer prevails.  During its continuance she complained of its influence as usual.  I too suffered from it in some degree, as I always do, more or less; but this time, it brought me no reinforcement of colds and coughs, which is what I dread the most.  Emily considers it a very uninteresting wind, but it does not affect her nervous system.  Charlotte p. 183agrees with me in thinking the --- [183a] a very provoking affair.  You are quite mistaken about her parasol; she affirms she brought it back, and I can bear witness to the fact, having seen it yesterday in her possession.  As for my book, I have no wish to see it again till I see you along with it, and then it will be welcome enough for the sake of the bearer.  We are all here much as you left us.  I have no news to tell you, except that Mr. Nicholls begged a holiday and went to Ireland three or four weeks ago, and is not expected back till Saturday; but that, I dare say, is no news at all.  We were all and severally pleased and gratified for your kind and judiciously selected presents, from papa down to Tabby, or down to myself, perhaps I ought rather to say.  The crab-cheese is excellent, and likely to be very useful, but I don’t intend to need it.  It is not choice but necessity has induced me to choose such a tiny sheet of paper for my letter, having none more suitable at hand; but perhaps it will contain as much as you need wish to read, and I to write, for I find I have nothing more to say, except that your little Tabby must be a charming little creature.  That is all, for as Charlotte is writing, or about to write to you herself, I need not send any messages from her.  Therefore accept my best love.  I must not omit the Major’s [183b] compliments.  And—Believe me to be your affectionate friend,

‘Anne Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, January 4th, 1848.

‘My dear Miss Nussey,—I am not going to give you a “nice long letter”—on the contrary, I mean to content myself with a shabby little note, to be ingulfed in a letter of Charlotte’s, which will, of course, be infinitely more acceptable to you than any production of mine, though I do not question your friendly regard for me, or the indulgent welcome you would accord to a missive of mine, even without a more agreeable companion to p. 184back it; but you must know there is a lamentable deficiency in my organ of language, which makes me almost as bad a hand at writing as talking, unless I have something particular to say.  I have now, however, to thank you and your friend for your kind letter and her pretty watch-guards, which I am sure we shall all of us value the more for being the work of her own hands.  You do not tell us how you bear the present unfavourable weather.  We are all cut up by this cruel east wind.  Most of us, i.e. Charlotte, Emily, and I have had the influenza, or a bad cold instead, twice over within the space of a few weeks.  Papa has had it once.  Tabby has escaped it altogether.  I have no news to tell you, for we have been nowhere, seen no one, and done nothing (to speak of) since you were here—and yet we contrive to be busy from morning till night.  Flossy is fatter than ever, but still active enough to relish a sheep-hunt.  I hope you and your circle have been more fortunate in the matter of colds than we have.

‘With kind regards to all,—I remain, dear Miss Nussey, yours ever affectionately,

‘Anne Brontë.’

Agnes Grey, as we have noted, was published by Newby, in one volume, in 1847.  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was issued by the same publisher, in three volumes, in 1848.  It is not generally known that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall went into a second edition the same year; and I should have pronounced it incredible, were not a copy of the later issue in my possession, that Anne Brontë had actually written a preface to this edition.  The fact is entirely ignored in the correspondence.  The preface in question makes it quite clear, if any evidence of that were necessary, that Anne had her brother in mind in writing the book.  ‘I could not be understood to suppose,’ she says, ‘that the proceedings of the unhappy scapegrace, with his few profligate companions I have here introduced, are a specimen of the common practices of society: the case is an extreme one, as I trusted none would fail to perceive; but I p. 185knew that such characters do exist, and if I have warned one rash youth from following in their steps, or prevented one thoughtless girl from falling into the very natural error of my heroine, the book has not been written in vain.’  ‘One word more and I have done,’ she continues.  ‘Respecting the author’s identity, I would have it to be distinctly understood that Acton Bell is neither Currer nor Ellis Bell, and, therefore, let not his faults be attributed to them.  As to whether the name is real or fictitious, it cannot greatly signify to those who know him only by his works.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘January 18th, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—In sitting down to write to you I feel as if I were doing a wrong and a selfish thing.  I believe I ought to discontinue my correspondence with you till times change, and the tide of calamity which of late days has set so strongly in against us takes a turn.  But the fact is, sometimes I feel it absolutely necessary to unburden my mind.  To papa I must only speak cheeringly, to Anne only encouragingly—to you I may give some hint of the dreary truth.

‘Anne and I sit alone and in seclusion as you fancy us, but we do not study.  Anne cannot study now, she can scarcely read; she occupies Emily’s chair; she does not get well.  A week ago we sent for a medical man of skill and experience from Leeds to see her.  He examined her with the stethoscope.  His report I forbear to dwell on for the present—even skilful physicians have often been mistaken in their conjectures.

‘My first impulse was to hasten her away to a warmer climate, but this was forbidden: she must not travel; she is not to stir from the house this winter; the temperature of her room is to be kept constantly equal.

‘Had leave been given to try change of air and scene, I should hardly have known how to act.  I could not possibly leave papa; and when I mentioned his accompanying us, the bare thought distressed him too much to be dwelt upon.  Papa p. 186is now upwards of seventy years of age; his habits for nearly thirty years have been those of absolute retirement; any change in them is most repugnant to him, and probably could not, at this time especially when the hand of God is so heavy upon his old age, be ventured upon without danger.

‘When we lost Emily I thought we had drained the very dregs of our cup of trial, but now when I hear Anne cough as Emily coughed, I tremble lest there should be exquisite bitterness yet to taste.  However, I must not look forwards, nor must I look backwards.  Too often I feel like one crossing an abyss on a narrow plank—a glance round might quite unnerve.

‘So circumstanced, my dear sir, what claim have I on your friendship, what right to the comfort of your letters?  My literary character is effaced for the time, and it is by that only you know me.  Care of papa and Anne is necessarily my chief present object in life, to the exclusion of all that could give me interest with my publishers or their connections.  Should Anne get better, I think I could rally and become Currer Bell once more, but if otherwise, I look no farther: sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

‘Anne is very patient in her illness, as patient as Emily was unflinching.  I recall one sister and look at the other with a sort of reverence as well as affection—under the test of suffering neither has faltered.

‘All the days of this winter have gone by darkly and heavily like a funeral train.  Since September, sickness has not quitted the house.  It is strange it did not use to be so, but I suspect now all this has been coming on for years.  Unused, any of us, to the possession of robust health, we have not noticed the gradual approaches of decay; we did not know its symptoms: the little cough, the small appetite, the tendency to take cold at every variation of atmosphere have been regarded as things of course.  I see them in another light now.

‘If you answer this, write to me as you would to a person in an average state of tranquillity and happiness.  I want to keep myself as firm and calm as I can.  While papa and Anne want me, I hope, I pray, never to fail them.  Were I to see you I should p. 187endeavour to converse on ordinary topics, and I should wish to write on the same—besides, it will be less harassing to yourself to address me as usual.

‘May God long preserve to you the domestic treasures you value; and when bereavement at last comes, may He give you strength to bear it.—Yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘February 1st, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—Anne seems so tranquil this morning, so free from pain and fever, and looks and speaks so like herself in health, that I too feel relieved, and I take advantage of the respite to write to you, hoping that my letter may reflect something of the comparative peace I feel.

‘Whether my hopes are quite fallacious or not, I do not know; but sometimes I fancy that the remedies prescribed by Mr. Teale, and approved—as I was glad to learn—by Dr. Forbes, are working a good result.  Consumption, I am aware, is a flattering malady, but certainly Anne’s illness has of late assumed a less alarming character than it had in the beginning: the hectic is allayed; the cough gives a more frequent reprieve.  Could I but believe she would live two years—a year longer, I should be thankful: I dreaded the terrors of the swift messenger which snatched Emily from us, as it seemed, in a few days.

‘The parcel came yesterday.  You and Mr. Smith do nothing by halves.  Neither of you care for being thanked, so I will keep my gratitude in my own mind.  The choice of books is perfect.  Papa is at this moment reading Macaulay’s History, which he had wished to see.  Anne is engaged with one of Frederika Bremer’s tales.

‘I wish I could send a parcel in return; I had hoped to have had one by this time ready to despatch.  When I saw you and Mr. Smith in London, I little thought of all that was to come between July and Spring: how my thoughts were to be caught away from imagination, enlisted and absorbed in realities the most cruel.

‘I will tell you what I want to do; it is to show you the first p. 188volume of my MS., which I have copied.  In reading Mary Barton (a clever though painful tale) I was a little dismayed to find myself in some measure anticipated both in subject and incident.  I should like to have your opinion on this point, and to know whether the resemblance appears as considerable to a stranger as it does to myself.  I should wish also to have the benefit of such general strictures and advice as you choose to give.  Shall I therefore send the MS. when I return the first batch of books?

‘But remember, if I show it to you it is on two conditions: the first, that you give me a faithful opinion—I do not promise to be swayed by it, but I should like to have it; the second, that you show it and speak of it to none but Mr. Smith.  I have always a great horror of premature announcements—they may do harm and can never do good.  Mr. Smith must be so kind as not to mention it yet in his quarterly circulars.  All human affairs are so uncertain, and my position especially is at present so peculiar, that I cannot count on the time, and would rather that no allusion should be made to a work of which great part is yet to create.

‘There are two volumes in the first parcel which, having seen, I cannot bring myself to part with, and must beg Mr. Smith’s permission to retain: Mr. Thackeray’s Journey from Cornhill, etc. and The testimony to the Truth.  That last is indeed a book after my own heart.  I do like the mind it discloses—it is of a fine and high order.  Alexander Harris may be a clown by birth, but he is a nobleman by nature.  When I could read no other book, I read his and derived comfort from it.  No matter whether or not I can agree in all his views, it is the principles, the feelings, the heart of the man I admire.

‘Write soon and tell me whether you think it advisable that I should send the MS.—Yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘Haworth, February 4th, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—I send the parcel up without delay, according to your request.  The manuscript has all its errors upon it, not p. 189having been read through since copying.  I have kept Madeline, along with the two other books I mentioned; I shall consider it the gift of Miss Kavanagh, and shall value it both for its literary excellence and for the modest merit of the giver.  We already possess Tennyson’s Poems and Our Street.  Emerson’s Essays I read with much interest, and often with admiration, but they are of mixed gold and clay—deep and invigorating truth, dreary and depressing fallacy seem to me combined therein.  In George Borrow’s works I found a wild fascination, a vivid graphic power of description, a fresh originality, an athletic simplicity (so to speak), which give them a stamp of their own.  After reading his Bible in Spain I felt as if I had actually travelled at his side, and seen the “wild Sil” rush from its mountain cradle; wandered in the hilly wilderness of the Sierras; encountered and conversed with Manehegan, Castillian, Andalusian, Arragonese, and, above all, with the savage Gitanos.

‘Your mention of Mr. Taylor suggests to me that possibly you and Mr. Smith might wish him to share the little secret of the MS.—that exclusion might seem invidious, that it might make your mutual evening chat less pleasant.  If so, admit him to the confidence by all means.  He is attached to the firm, and will no doubt keep its secrets.  I shall be glad of another censor, and if a severe one, so much the better, provided he is also just.  I court the keenest criticism.  Far rather would I never publish more, than publish anything inferior to my first effort.  Be honest, therefore, all three of you.  If you think this book promises less favourably than Jane Eyre, say so; it is but trying again, i.e., if life and health be spared.

‘Anne continues a little better—the mild weather suits her.  At times I hear the renewal of hope’s whisper, but I dare not listen too fondly; she deceived me cruelly before.  A sudden change to cold would be the test.  I dread such change, but must not anticipate.  Spring lies before us, and then summer—surely we may hope a little!

‘Anne expresses a wish to see the notices of the poems. You had better, therefore, send them.  We shall expect to find painful allusions to one now above blame and beyond praise; but these p. 190must be borne.  For ourselves, we are almost indifferent to censure.  I read the Quarterly without a pang, except that I thought there were some sentences disgraceful to the critic.  He seems anxious to let it be understood that he is a person well acquainted with the habits of the upper classes.  Be this as it may, I am afraid he is no gentleman; and moreover, that no training could make him such. [190]  Many a poor man, born and bred to labour, would disdain that reviewer’s cast of feeling.—Yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘March 2nd, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—My sister still continues better: she has less languor and weakness; her spirits are improved.  This change gives cause, I think, both for gratitude and hope.

‘I am glad that you and Mr. Smith like the commencement of my present work.  I wish it were more than a commencement; for how it will be reunited after the long break, or how it can gather force of flow when the current has been checked or rather drawn off so long, I know not.

‘I sincerely thank you both for the candid expression of your objections.  What you say with reference to the first chapter shall be duly weighed.  At present I feel reluctant to withdraw it, because, as I formerly said of the Lowood part of Jane Eyre, it is true.  The curates and their ongoings are merely photographed from the life.  I should like you to explain to me more fully the ground of your objections.  Is it because you think this chapter will render the work liable to severe handling by the press?  Is it because knowing as you now do the identity of “Currer Bell,” this scene strikes you as unfeminine?  Is it because it is intrinsically defective and inferior?  I am afraid the two first reasons would not weigh with me—the last would.

‘Anne and I thought it very kind in you to preserve all the notices of the Poems so carefully for us.  Some of them, as you said, were well worth reading.  We were glad to find that our old p. 191friend the Critic has again a kind word for us.  I was struck with one curious fact, viz., that four of the notices are fac-similes of each other.  How does this happen?  I suppose they copy.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘March 8th, 1849.

‘Dear Ellen,—Anne’s state has apparently varied very little during the last fortnight or three weeks.  I wish I could say she gains either flesh, strength, or appetite; but there is no progress on these points, nor I hope, as far as regards the two last at least, any falling off; she is piteously thin.  Her cough, and the pain in her side continue the same.

‘I write these few lines that you may not think my continued silence strange; anything like frequent correspondence I cannot keep up, and you must excuse me.  I trust you and all at Brookroyd are happy and well.  Give my love to your mother and all the rest, and—Believe me, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘March 11th, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—My sister has been something worse since I wrote last.  We have had nearly a week of frost, and the change has tried her, as I feared it would do, though not so severely as former experience had led me to apprehend.  I am thankful to say she is now again a little better.  Her state of mind is usually placid, and her chief sufferings consist in the harassing cough and a sense of languor.

‘I ought to have acknowledged the safe arrival of the parcel before now, but I put it off from day to day, fearing I should write a sorrowful letter.  A similar apprehension induces me to abridge this note.

‘Believe me, whether in happiness or the contrary, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS LÆTITIA WHEELWRIGHT

‘Haworth, March 15th, 1849.

‘Dear Lætitia,—I have not quite forgotten you through the p. 192winter, but I have remembered you only like some pleasant waking idea struggling through a dreadful dream.  You say my last letter was dated September 14th.  You ask how I have passed the time since.  What has happened to me?  Why have I been silent?

‘It is soon told.

‘On the 24th of September my only brother, after being long in weak health, and latterly consumptive—though we were far from apprehending immediate danger—died, quite suddenly as it seemed to us.  He had been out two days before.  The shock was great.  Ere he could be interred I fell ill.  A low nervous fever left me very weak.  As I was slowly recovering, my sister Emily, whom you knew, was seized with inflammation of the lungs; suppuration took place; two agonising months of hopes and fears followed, and on the 19th of December she died.

‘She was scarcely cold in her grave when Anne, my youngest and last sister, who has been delicate all her life, exhibited symptoms that struck us with acute alarm.  We sent for the first advice that could be procured.  She was examined with the stethoscope, and the dreadful fact was announced that her lungs too were affected, and that tubercular consumption had already made considerable progress.  A system of treatment was prescribed, which has since been ratified by the opinion of Dr. Forbes, whom your papa will, I dare say, know.  I hope it has somewhat delayed disease.  She is now a patient invalid, and I am her nurse.  God has hitherto supported me in some sort through all these bitter calamities, and my father, I am thankful to say, has been wonderfully sustained; but there have been hours, days, weeks of inexpressible anguish to undergo, and the cloud of impending distress still lowers dark and sullen above us.  I cannot write much.  I can only pray Providence to preserve you and yours from such affliction as He has seen good to accumulate on me and mine.

‘With best regards to your dear mamma and all your circle,—Believe me, yours faithfully,

‘C. Brontë.’

p. 193TO MISS WOOLER

‘Haworth, March 24th, 1849.

‘My dear Miss Wooler,—I have delayed answering your letter in the faint hope that I might be able to reply favourably to your inquiries after my sister’s health.  This, however, is not permitted me to do.  Her decline is gradual and fluctuating, but its nature is not doubtful.  The symptoms of cough, pain in the side and chest, wasting of flesh, strength, and appetite, after the sad experience we have had, cannot but be regarded by us as equivocal.

‘In spirit she is resigned; at heart she is, I believe, a true Christian.  She looks beyond this life, and regards her home and rest as elsewhere than on earth.  May God support her and all of us through the trial of lingering sickness, and aid her in the last hour when the struggle which separates soul from body must be gone through!

‘We saw Emily torn from the midst of us when our hearts clung to her with intense attachment, and when, loving each other as we did—well, it seemed as if (might we but have been spared to each other) we could have found complete happiness in our mutual society and affection.  She was scarcely buried when Anne’s health failed, and we were warned that consumption had found another victim in her, and that it would be vain to reckon on her life.

‘These things would be too much if Reason, unsupported by Religion, were condemned to bear them alone.  I have cause to be most thankful for the strength which has hitherto been vouchsafed both to my father and myself.  God, I think, is specially merciful to old age; and for my own part, trials which in prospective would have seemed to me quite intolerable, when they actually came, I endured without prostration.  Yet, I must confess, that in the time which has elapsed since Emily’s death, there have been moments of solitary, deep, inert affliction, far harder to bear than those which immediately followed our loss.  The crisis of bereavement has an acute pang which goads to exertion, the desolate after-feeling sometimes paralyses.

p. 194‘I have learned that we are not to find solace in our own strength: we must seek it in God’s omnipotence.  Fortitude is good, but fortitude itself must be shaken under us to teach us how weak we are.

‘With best wishes to yourself and all dear to you, and sincere thanks for the interest you so kindly continue to take in me and my sister,—Believe me, my dear Miss Wooler, yours faithfully,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘April 16th, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—Your kind advice on the subject of Homœopathy deserves and has our best thanks.  We find ourselves, however, urged from more than one quarter to try different systems and medicines, and I fear we have already given offence by not listening to all.  The fact is, were we in every instance compliant, my dear sister would be harassed by continual changes.  Cod-liver oil and carbonate of iron were first strongly recommended.  Anne took them as long as she could, but at last she was obliged to give them up: the oil yielded her no nutriment, it did not arrest the progress of emaciation, and as it kept her always sick, she was prevented from taking food of any sort.  Hydropathy was then strongly advised.  She is now trying Gobold’s Vegetable Balsam; she thinks it does her some good; and as it is the first medicine which has had that effect, she would wish to persevere with it for a time.  She is also looking hopefully forward to deriving benefit from change of air.  We have obtained Mr. Teale’s permission to go to the seaside in the course of six or eight weeks.  At first I felt torn between two duties—that of staying with papa and going with Anne; but as it is papa’s own most kindly expressed wish that I should adopt the latter plan, and as, besides, he is now, thank God! in tolerable health, I hope to be spared the pain of resigning the care of my sister to other hands, however friendly.  We wish to keep together as long as we can.  I hope, too, to derive from the change some renewal of physical strength and mental composure (in neither of which points am I what I ought or wish to be) to make me a better and more cheery nurse.

p. 195‘I fear I must have seemed to you hard in my observations about The Emigrant Family.  The fact was, I compared Alexander Harris with himself only.  It is not equal to the Testimony to the Truth, but, tried by the standard of other and very popular books too, it is very clever and original.  Both subject and the manner of treating it are unhackneyed: he gives new views of new scenes and furnishes interesting information on interesting topics.  Considering the increasing necessity for and tendency to emigration, I should think it has a fair chance of securing the success it merits.

‘I took up Leigh Hunt’s book The Town with the impression that it would be interesting only to Londoners, and I was surprised, ere I had read many pages, to find myself enchained by his pleasant, graceful, easy style, varied knowledge, just views, and kindly spirit.  There is something peculiarly anti-melancholic in Leigh Hunt’s writings, and yet they are never boisterous.  They resemble sunshine, being at once bright and tranquil.

‘I like Carlyle better and better.  His style I do not like, nor do I always concur in his opinions, nor quite fall in with his hero worship; but there is a manly love of truth, an honest recognition and fearless vindication of intrinsic greatness, of intellectual and moral worth, considered apart from birth, rank, or wealth, which commands my sincere admiration.  Carlyle would never do for a contributor to the Quarterly.  I have not read his French Revolution.

‘I congratulate you on the approaching publication of Mr. Ruskin’s new work.  If the Seven Lamps of Architecture resemble their predecessor, Modern Painters, they will be no lamps at all, but a new constellation—seven bright stars, for whose rising the reading world ought to be anxiously agaze.

‘Do not ask me to mention what books I should like to read.  Half the pleasure of receiving a parcel from Cornhill consists in having its contents chosen for us.  We like to discover, too, by the leaves cut here and there, that the ground has been travelled before us.  I may however say, with reference to works of fiction, that I should much like to see one of Godwin’s p. 196works, never having hitherto had that pleasure—Caleb Williams or Fleetwood, or which you thought best worth reading.

‘But it is yet much too soon to talk of sending more books; our present stock is scarcely half exhausted.  You will perhaps think I am a slow reader, but remember, Currer Bell is a country housewife, and has sundry little matters connected with the needle and kitchen to attend to which take up half his day, especially now when, alas! there is but one pair of hands where once there were three.  I did not mean to touch that chord, its sound is too sad.

‘I try to write now and then.  The effort was a hard one at first.  It renewed the terrible loss of last December strangely.  Worse than useless did it seem to attempt to write what there no longer lived an “Ellis Bell” to read; the whole book, with every hope founded on it, faded to vanity and vexation of spirit.

‘One inducement to persevere and do my best I still have, however, and I am thankful for it: I should like to please my kind friends at Cornhill.  To that end I wish my powers would come back; and if it would please Providence to restore my remaining sister, I think they would.

‘Do not forget to tell me how you are when you write again.  I trust your indisposition is quite gone by this time.—Believe me, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘May 1st, 1849.

‘Dear Ellen,—I returned Mary Taylor’s letter to Hunsworth as soon as I had read it.  Thank God she was safe up to that time, but I do not think the earthquake was then over.  I shall long to hear tidings of her again.

‘Anne was worse during the warm weather we had about a week ago.  She grew weaker, and both the pain in her side and her cough were worse; strange to say, since it is colder, she has appeared rather to revive than sink.  I still hope that if she gets over May she may last a long time.

p. 197‘We have engaged lodgings at Scarbro’.  We stipulated for a good-sized sitting-room and an airy double-bedded lodging room, with a sea view, and if not deceived, have obtained these desiderata at No. 2 Cliff.  Anne says it is one of the best situations in the place.  It would not have done to have taken lodgings either in the town or on the bleak steep coast, where Miss Wooler’s house is situated.  If Anne is to get any good she must have every advantage.  Miss Outhwaite [her godmother] left her in her will a legacy of £200, and she cannot employ her money better than in obtaining what may prolong existence, if it does not restore health.  We hope to leave home on the 23rd, and I think it will be advisable to rest at York, and stay all night there.  I hope this arrangement will suit you.  We reckon on your society, dear Ellen, as a real privilege and pleasure.  We shall take little luggage, and shall have to buy bonnets and dresses and several other things either at York or Scarbro’; which place do you think would be best?  Oh, if it would please God to strengthen and revive Anne, how happy we might be together!  His will, however, must be done, and if she is not to recover, it remains to pray for strength and patience.

‘C. B.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘May 8th, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—I hasten to acknowledge the two kind letters for which I am indebted to you.  That fine spring weather of which you speak did not bring such happiness to us in its sunshine as I trust it did to you and thousands besides—the change proved trying to my sister.  For a week or ten days I did not know what to think, she became so weak, and suffered so much from increased pain in the side, and aggravated cough.  The last few days have been much colder, yet, strange to say, during their continuance she has appeared rather to revive than sink.  She not unfrequently shows the very same symptoms which were apparent in Emily only a few days before she died—fever in the evenings, sleepless nights, and a sort of lethargy in the morning hours; this creates acute p. 198anxiety—then comes an improvement, which reassures.  In about three weeks, should the weather be genial and her strength continue at all equal to the journey, we hope to go to Scarboro’.  It is not without misgiving that I contemplate a departure from home under such circumstances; but since she herself earnestly wishes the experiment to be tried, I think it ought not to be neglected.  We are in God’s hands, and must trust the results to Him.  An old school-fellow of mine, a tried and faithful friend, has volunteered to accompany us.  I shall have the satisfaction of leaving papa to the attentions of two servants equally tried and faithful.  One of them is indeed now old and infirm, and unfit to stir much from her chair by the kitchen fireside; but the other is young and active, and even she has lived with us seven years.  I have reason, therefore, you see, to be thankful amidst sorrow, especially as papa still possesses every faculty unimpaired, and though not robust, has good general health—a sort of chronic cough is his sole complaint.

‘I hope Mr. Smith will not risk a cheap edition of Jane Eyre yet, he had better wait awhile—the public will be sick of the name of that one book.  I can make no promise as to when another will be ready—neither my time nor my efforts are my own.  That absorption in my employment to which I gave myself up without fear of doing wrong when I wrote Jane Eyre, would now be alike impossible and blamable; but I do what I can, and have made some little progress.  We must all be patient.

‘Meantime, I should say, let the public forget at their ease, and let us not be nervous about it.  And as to the critics, if the Bells possess real merit, I do not fear impartial justice being rendered them one day.  I have a very short mental as well as physical sight in some matters, and am far less uneasy at the idea of public impatience, misconstruction, censure, etc., than I am at the thought of the anxiety of those two or three friends in Cornhill to whom I owe much kindness, and whose expectations I would earnestly wish not to disappoint.  If they can make up their minds to wait tranquilly, p. 199and put some confidence in my goodwill, if not my power, to get on as well as may be, I shall not repine; but I verily believe that the “nobler sex” find it more difficult to wait, to plod, to work out their destiny inch by inch, than their sisters do.  They are always for walking so fast and taking such long steps, one cannot keep up with them.  One should never tell a gentleman that one has commenced a task till it is nearly achieved.  Currer Bell, even if he had no let or hindrance, and if his path were quite smooth, could never march with the tread of a Scott, a Bulwer, a Thackeray, or a Dickens.  I want you and Mr. Smith clearly to understand this.  I have always wished to guard you against exaggerated anticipations—calculate low when you calculate on me.  An honest man—and woman too—would always rather rise above expectation than fall below it.

‘Have I lectured enough? and am I understood?

‘Give my sympathising respects to Mrs. Williams. I hope her little daughter is by this time restored to perfect health.  It pleased me to see with what satisfaction you speak of your son.  I was glad, too, to hear of the progress and welfare of Miss Kavanagh.  The notices of Mr. Harris’s works are encouraging and just—may they contribute to his success!

‘Should Mr. Thackeray again ask after Currer Bell, say the secret is and will be well kept because it is not worth disclosure.  This fact his own sagacity will have already led him to divine.  In the hope that it may not be long ere I hear from you again,—Believe me, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS WOOLER

‘Haworth, May 16th, 1849.

‘My dear Miss Wooler,—I will lose no time in thanking you for your letter and kind offer of assistance.  We have, however, already engaged lodgings.  I am not myself acquainted with Scarbro’, but Anne knows it well, having been there three or four times.  She had a particular preference for the situation of some lodgings (No. 2 Cliff).  We wrote about them, and finding them disengaged, took them.  p. 200Your information is, notwithstanding, valuable, should we find this place in any way ineligible.  It is a satisfaction to be provided with directions for future use.

‘Next Wednesday is the day fixed for our departure.  Ellen Nussey accompanies us (by Anne’s expressed wish).  I could not refuse her society, but I dared not urge her to go, for I have little hope that the excursion will be one of pleasure or benefit to those engaged in it.  Anne is extremely weak.  She herself has a fixed impression that the sea air will give her a chance of regaining strength; that chance, therefore, we must have.  Having resolved to try the experiment, misgivings are useless; and yet, when I look at her, misgivings will rise.  She is more emaciated than Emily was at the very last; her breath scarcely serves her to mount the stairs, however slowly.  She sleeps very little at night, and often passes most of the forenoon in a semi-lethargic state.  Still, she is up all day, and even goes out a little when it is fine.  Fresh air usually acts as a stimulus, but its reviving power diminishes.

‘With best wishes for your own health and welfare,—Believe me, my dear Miss Wooler, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘No. 2 Cliff, Scarboro’, May 27th, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—The date above will inform you why I have not answered your last letter more promptly.  I have been busy with preparations for departure and with the journey.  I am thankful to say we reached our destination safely, having rested one night at York.  We found assistance wherever we needed it; there was always an arm ready to do for my sister what I was not quite strong enough to do: lift her in and out of the carriages, carry her across the line, etc.

‘It made her happy to see both York and its Minster, and Scarboro’ and its bay once more.  There is yet no revival of bodily strength—I fear indeed the slow ebb continues.  People who see her tell me I must not expect her to last long—but it is something to cheer her mind.

p. 201‘Our lodgings are pleasant.  As Anne sits at the window she can look down on the sea, which this morning is calm as glass.  She says if she could breathe more freely she would be comfortable at this moment—but she cannot breathe freely.

‘My friend Ellen is with us.  I find her presence a solace.  She is a calm, steady girl—not brilliant, but good and true.  She suits and has always suited me well.  I like her, with her phlegm, repose, sense, and sincerity, better than I should like the most talented without these qualifications.

‘If ever I see you again I should have pleasure in talking over with you the topics you allude to in your last—or rather, in hearing you talk them over.  We see these things through a glass darkly—or at least I see them thus.  So far from objecting to speculation on, or discussion of, the subject, I should wish to hear what others have to say.  By others, I mean only the serious and reflective—levity in such matters shocks as much as hypocrisy.

‘Write to me.  In this strange place your letters will come like the visits of a friend.  Fearing to lose the post, I will add no more at present.—Believe me, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘May 30th, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—My poor sister is taken quietly home at last.  She died on Monday.  With almost her last breath she said she was happy, and thanked God that death was come, and come so gently.  I did not think it would be so soon.

‘You will not expect me to add more at present.—Yours faithfully,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘June 25th, 1849.

‘My dear Sir,—I am now again at home, where I returned last Thursday.  I call it home still—much as London would be called London if an earthquake should shake its streets to ruins.  But let me not be ungrateful: Haworth parsonage is still a home for me, and not quite a ruined or desolate home either.  Papa is there, and two most affectionate and faithful p. 202servants, and two old dogs, in their way as faithful and affectionate—Emily’s large house-dog which lay at the side of her dying bed, and followed her funeral to the vault, lying in the pew couched at our feet while the burial service was being read—and Anne’s little spaniel.  The ecstasy of these poor animals when I came in was something singular.  At former returns from brief absences they always welcomed me warmly—but not in that strange, heart-touching way.  I am certain they thought that, as I was returned, my sisters were not far behind.  But here my sisters will come no more.  Keeper may visit Emily’s little bed-room—as he still does day by day—and Flossy may look wistfully round for Anne, they will never see them again—nor shall I—at least the human part of me.  I must not write so sadly, but how can I help thinking and feeling sadly?  In the daytime effort and occupation aid me, but when evening darkens, something in my heart revolts against the burden of solitude—the sense of loss and want grows almost too much for me.  I am not good or amiable in such moments, I am rebellious, and it is only the thought of my dear father in the next room, or of the kind servants in the kitchen, or some caress from the poor dogs, which restores me to softer sentiments and more rational views.  As to the night—could I do without bed, I would never seek it.  Waking, I think, sleeping, I dream of them; and I cannot recall them as they were in health, still they appear to me in sickness and suffering.  Still, my nights were worse after the first shock of Branwell’s death—they were terrible then; and the impressions experienced on waking were at that time such as we do not put into language.  Worse seemed at hand than was yet endured—in truth, worse awaited us.

‘All this bitterness must be tasted.  Perhaps the palate will grow used to the draught in time, and find its flavour less acrid.  This pain must be undergone; its poignancy, I trust, will be blunted one day.  Ellen would have come back with me but I would not let her.  I knew it would be better to face the desolation at once—later or sooner the sharp pang must be experienced.

p. 203‘Labour must be the cure, not sympathy.  Labour is the only radical cure for rooted sorrow.  The society of a calm, serenely cheerful companion—such as Ellen—soothes pain like a soft opiate, but I find it does not probe or heal the wound; sharper, more severe means, are necessary to make a remedy.  Total change might do much; where that cannot be obtained, work is the best substitute.

‘I by no means ask Miss Kavanagh to write to me.  Why should she trouble herself to do it?  What claim have I on her?  She does not know me—she cannot care for me except vaguely and on hearsay.  I have got used to your friendly sympathy, and it comforts me.  I have tried and trust the fidelity of one or two other friends, and I lean upon it.  The natural affection of my father and the attachment and solicitude of our two servants are precious and consolatory to me, but I do not look round for general pity; conventional condolence I do not want, either from man or woman.

‘The letter you inclosed in your last bore the signature H. S. Mayers—the address, Sheepscombe, Stroud, Gloucestershire; can you give me any information respecting the writer?  It is my intention to acknowledge it one day.  I am truly glad to hear that your little invalid is restored to health, and that the rest of your family continue well.  Mrs. Williams should spare herself for her husband’s and children’s sake.  Her life and health are too valuable to those round her to be lavished—she should be careful of them.—Believe me, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

It is not necessary to tell over again the story of Anne’s death.  Miss Ellen Nussey, who was an eye witness, has related it once for all in Mrs. Gaskell’s Memoir.  The tomb at Scarborough hears the following inscription:—

here lie the remains of
ANNE BRONTË
DAUGHTER OF THE REV. P. BRONTË
incumbent of haworth, yorkshire
She Died, Aged 28, May 28th, 1849

p. 204CHAPTER VIII: ELLEN NUSSEY

If to be known by one’s friends is the index to character that it is frequently assumed to be, Charlotte Brontë comes well out of that ordeal.  She was discriminating in friendship and leal to the heart’s core.  With what gratitude she thought of the publisher who gave her the ‘first chance’ we know by recognising that the manly Dr. John of Villette was Mr. George Smith of Smith & Elder.  Mr. W. S. Williams, again, would seem to have been a singularly gifted and amiable man.  To her three girl friends, Ellen Nussey, Mary Taylor, and Lætitia Wheelwright, she was loyal to her dying day, and pencilled letters to the two of them who were in England were written in her last illness.  Of all her friends, Ellen Nussey must always have the foremost place in our esteem.  Like Mary Taylor, she made Charlotte’s acquaintance when, at fifteen years of age, she first went to Roe Head School.  Mrs. Gaskell has sufficiently described the beginnings of that friendship which death was not to break.  Ellen Nussey and Charlotte Brontë corresponded with a regularity which one imagines would be impossible had they both been born half a century later.  The two girls loved one another profoundly.  They wrote at times almost daily.  They quarrelled occasionally over trifles, as friends will, but Charlotte was always full of contrition when a few hours had passed.  Towards the end of her life she wrote to Mr. Williams a letter concerning Miss Nussey which may well be printed here.

p. 205TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘January 3rd, 1850.

‘My dear Sir,—I have to acknowledge the receipt of the Morning Chronicle with a good review, and of the Church of England Quarterly and the Westminster with bad ones.  I have also to thank you for your letter, which would have been answered sooner had I been alone; but just now I am enjoying the treat of my friend Ellen’s society, and she makes me indolent and negligent—I am too busy talking to her all day to do anything else.  You allude to the subject of female friendships, and express wonder at the infrequency of sincere attachments amongst women.  As to married women, I can well understand that they should be absorbed in their husbands and children—but single women often like each other much, and derive great solace from their mutual regard.  Friendship, however, is a plant which cannot be forced.  True friendship is no gourd, springing in a night and withering in a day.  When I first saw Ellen I did not care for her; we were school-fellows.  In course of time we learnt each other’s faults and good points.  We were contrasts—still, we suited.  Affection was first a germ, then a sapling, then a strong tree—now, no new friend, however lofty or profound in intellect—not even Miss Martineau herself—could be to me what Ellen is; yet she is no more than a conscientious, observant, calm, well-bred Yorkshire girl.  She is without romance.  If she attempts to read poetry, or poetic prose, aloud, I am irritated and deprive her of the book—if she talks of it, I stop my ears; but she is good; she is true; she is faithful, and I love her.

‘Since I came home, Miss Martineau has written me a long and truly kindly letter.  She invites me to visit her at Ambleside.  I like the idea.  Whether I can realise it or not, it is pleasant to have in prospect.

‘You ask me to write to Mrs. Williams.  I would rather she wrote to me first; and let her send any kind of letter she likes, without studying mood or manner.—Yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

p. 206Good, True, Faithful—friendship has no sweeter words than these; and it was this loyalty in Miss Nussey which has marked her out in our day as a fine type of sweet womanliness, and will secure to her a lasting name as the friend of Charlotte Brontë.

Miss Ellen Nussey was one of a large family of children, all of whom she survives.  Her home during the years of her first friendship with Charlotte Brontë was at the Rydings, at that time the property of an uncle, Reuben Walker, a distinguished court physician.  The family in that generation and in this has given many of its members to high public service in various professions.  Two Nusseys, indeed, and two Walkers, were court physicians in their day.  When Earl Fitzwilliam was canvassing for the county in 1809, he was a guest at the Rydings for two weeks, and on his election was chaired by the tenantry.  Reuben Walker, this uncle of Miss Nussey’s, was the only Justice of the Peace for the district which included Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, and Halifax, during the Luddite riots—a significant reminder of the growth of population since that day.  Ellen Nussey’s home was at the Rydings, then tenanted by her brother John, until 1837, and she then removed to Brookroyd, where she lived until long after Charlotte Brontë died.

The first letter to Ellen Nussey is dated May 31, 1831, Charlotte having become her school-fellow in the previous January.  It would seem to have been a mere play exercise across the school-room, as the girls were then together at Roe Head.

p. 207‘Dear Miss Nussey,—I take advantage of the earliest opportunity to thank you for the letter you favoured me with last week, and to apologise for having so long neglected to write to you; indeed, I believe this will be the first letter or note I have ever addressed to you.  I am extremely obliged to Mary for her kind invitation, and I assure you that I should very much have liked to hear the Lectures on Galvanism, as they would doubtless have been amusing and instructive.  But we are often compelled to bend our inclination to our duty (as Miss Wooler observed the other day), and since there are so many holidays this half-year, it would have appeared almost unreasonable to ask for an extra holiday; besides, we should perhaps have got behindhand with our lessons, so that, everything considered, it is perhaps as well that circumstances have deprived us of this pleasure.—Believe me to remain, your affectionate friend,

‘C. Brontë.’

But by the Christmas holidays, ‘Dear Miss Nussey’ has become ‘Dear Ellen,’ and the friendship has already well commenced.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, January 13th, 1832.

‘Dear Ellen,—The receipt of your letter gave me an agreeable surprise, for notwithstanding your faithful promises, you must excuse me if I say that I had little confidence in their fulfilment, knowing that when school girls once get home they willingly abandon every recollection which tends to remind them of school, and indeed they find such an infinite variety of circumstances to engage their attention and employ their leisure hours, that they are easily persuaded that they have no time to fulfil promises made at school.  It gave me great pleasure, however, to find that you and Miss Taylor are exceptions to the general rule.  The cholera still seems slowly advancing, but let us yet hope, knowing that all things are under the guidance of a merciful Providence.  England has hitherto been highly favoured, for the disease has neither raged with the astounding violence, nor extended itself with the frightful rapidity which marked its progress in many of the continental countries.—From your affectionate friend,

‘Charlotte Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, January 1st, 1833.

‘Dear Ellen,—I believe we agreed to correspond once a p. 208month.  That space of time has now elapsed since I received your last interesting letter, and I now therefore hasten to reply.  Accept my congratulations on the arrival of the New Year, every succeeding day of which will, I trust, find you wiser and better in the true sense of those much-used words.  The first day of January always presents to my mind a train of very solemn and important reflections, and a question more easily asked than answered frequently occurs, viz.—How have I improved the past year, and with what good intentions do I view the dawn of its successor?  These, my dearest Ellen, are weighty considerations which (young as we are) neither you nor I can too deeply or too seriously ponder.  I am sorry your too great diffidence, arising, I think, from the want of sufficient confidence in your own capabilities, prevented you from writing to me in French, as I think the attempt would have materially contributed to your improvement in that language.  You very kindly caution me against being tempted by the fondness of my sisters to consider myself of too much importance, and then in a parenthesis you beg me not to be offended.  O Ellen, do you think I could be offended by any good advice you may give me?  No, I thank you heartily, and love you, if possible, better for it.  I am glad you like Kenilworth.  It is certainly a splendid production, more resembling a romance than a novel, and, in my opinion, one of the most interesting works that ever emanated from the great Sir Walter’s pen.  I was exceedingly amused at the characteristic and naive manner in which you expressed your detestation of Varney’s character—so much so, indeed, that I could not forbear laughing aloud when I perused that part of your letter.  He is certainly the personification of consummate villainy; and in the delineation of his dark and profoundly artful mind, Scott exhibits a wonderful knowledge of human nature as well as surprising skill in embodying his perceptions so as to enable others to become participators in that knowledge.  Excuse the want of news in this very barren epistle, for I really have none to communicate.  Emily and Anne beg to be kindly remembered to you.  Give my best love to your mother and sisters, and as it is very late permit me to conclude with the p. 209assurance of my unchanged, unchanging, and unchangeable affection for you.—Adieu, my sweetest Ellen, I am ever yours,

‘Charlotte.’

Here is a pleasant testimony to Miss Nussey’s attractions from Emily and Anne.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, September 11th, 1833.

‘Dear Ellen,—I have hitherto delayed answering your last letter because from what you said I imagined you might be from home.  Since you were here Emily has been very ill.  Her ailment was erysipelas in the arm, accompanied by severe bilious attacks, and great general debility.  Her arm was obliged to be cut in order to relieve it.  It is now, I am happy to say, nearly healed—her health is, in fact, almost perfectly re-established.  The sickness still continues to recur at intervals.  Were I to tell you of the impression you have made on every one here you would accuse me of flattery.  Papa and aunt are continually adducing you as an example for me to shape my actions and behaviour by.  Emily and Anne say “they never saw any one they liked so well as Miss Nussey,” and Tabby talks a great deal more nonsense about you than I choose to report.  You must read this letter, dear Ellen, without thinking of the writing, for I have indited it almost all in the twilight.  It is now so dark that, notwithstanding the singular property of “seeing in the night-time” which the young ladies at Roe Head used to attribute to me, I can scribble no longer.  All the family unite with me in wishes for your welfare.  Remember me respectfully to your mother and sisters, and supply all those expressions of warm and genuine regard which the increasing darkness will not permit me to insert.

‘Charlotte Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, February 11th, 1834.

‘Dear Ellen,—My letters are scarcely worth the postage, and therefore I have, till now, delayed answering your last communication; but upwards of two months having elapsed p. 210since I received it, I have at length determined to take up my pen in reply lest your anger should be roused by my apparent negligence.  It grieved me extremely to hear of your precarious state of health.  I trust sincerely that your medical adviser is mistaken in supposing you have any tendency to a pulmonary affection.  Dear Ellen, that would indeed be a calamity.  I have seen enough of consumption to dread it as one of the most insidious and fatal diseases incident to humanity.  But I repeat it, I hope, nay pray, that your alarm is groundless.  If you remember, I used frequently to tell you at school that you were constitutionally nervous—guard against the gloomy impressions which such a state of mind naturally produces.  Take constant and regular exercise, and all, I doubt not, will yet be well.  What a remarkable winter we have had!  Rain and wind continually, but an almost total absence of frost and snow.  Has general ill health been the consequence of wet weather at Birstall or not?  With us an unusual number of deaths have lately taken place.  According to custom I have no news to communicate, indeed I do not write either to retail gossip or to impart solid information; my motives for maintaining our mutual correspondence are, in the first place, to get intelligence from you, and in the second that we may remind each other of our separate existences; without some such medium of reciprocal converse, according to the nature of things, you, who are surrounded by society and friends, would soon forget that such an insignificant being as myself ever lived.  I, however, in the solitude of our wild little hill village, think of my only unrelated friend, my dear ci-devant school companion daily—nay, almost hourly.  Now Ellen, don’t you think I have very cleverly contrived to make up a letter out of nothing?  Goodbye, dearest.  That God may bless you is the earnest prayer of your ever faithful friend,

‘Charlotte Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, November 10th, 1834.

‘Dear Ellen,—I have been a long while, a very long while without writing to you.  A letter I received from Mary Taylor p. 211this morning reminded me of my neglect, and made me instantly sit down to atone for it, if possible.  She tells me your aunt, of Brookroyd, is dead, and that Sarah is very ill; for this I am truly sorry, but I hope her case is not yet without hope.  You should however remember that death, should it happen, will undoubtedly be great gain to her.  In your last, dear Ellen, you ask my opinion respecting the amusement of dancing, and whether I thought it objectionable when indulged in for an hour or two in parties of boys and girls.  I should hesitate to express a difference of opinion from Mr. Atkinson, but really the matter seems to me to stand thus: It is allowed on all hands that the sin of dancing consists not in the mere action of shaking the shanks (as the Scotch say), but in the consequences that usually attend it—namely, frivolity and waste of time; when it is used only, as in the case you state, for the exercise and amusement of an hour among young people (who surely may without any breach of God’s commandments be allowed a little light-heartedness), these consequences cannot follow.  Ergo (according to my manner of arguing), the amusement is at such times perfectly innocent.  Having nothing more to say, I will conclude with the expression of my sincere and earnest attachment for, Ellen, your own dear self.

‘Charlotte Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, January 12th, 1835.

‘Dearest Ellen,—I thought it better not to answer your kind letter too soon, lest I should (in the present fully occupied state of your time) appear intrusive.  I am happy to inform you papa has given me permission to accept the invitation it conveyed, and ere long I hope once more to have the pleasure of seeing almost the only and certainly the dearest friend I possess (out of our own family).  I leave it to you to fix the time, only requesting you not to appoint too early a day; let it be a fortnight or three weeks at least from the date of the present letter.  I am greatly obliged to you for your kind offer of meeting me at Bradford, but papa thinks that such a plan p. 212would involve uncertainty, and be productive of trouble to you.  He recommends that I should go direct in a gig from Haworth at the time you shall determine, or, if that day should prove unfavourable, the first subsequent fine one.  Such an arrangement would leave us both free, and if it meets with your approbation would perhaps be the best we could finally resolve upon.  Excuse the brevity of this epistle, dear Ellen, for I am in a great hurry, and we shall, I trust, soon see each other face to face, which will be better than a hundred letters.  Give my respectful love to your mother and sisters, accept the kind remembrances of all our family, and—Believe me in particular to be, your firm and faithful friend,

‘Charlotte Brontë.

‘P.S.—You ask me to stay a month when I come, but as I do not wish to tire you with my company, and as, besides, papa and aunt both think a fortnight amply sufficient, I shall not exceed that period.  Farewell, dearest, dearest.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Roe Head, September 10th, 1835.

‘My dear Ellen,—You are far too kind and frequent in your invitations.  You puzzle me: I hardly know how to refuse, and it is still more embarrassing to accept.  At any rate, I cannot come this week, for we are in the very thickest mêlée of the repetitions; I was hearing the terrible fifth section when your note arrived.  But Miss Wooler says I must go to Gomersall next Friday as she promised for me on Whitsunday; and on Sunday morning I will join you at church, if it be convenient, and stay at Rydings till Monday morning.  There’s a free and easy proposal!  Miss Wooler has driven me to it—she says her character is implicated!  I am very sorry to hear that your mother has been ill.  I do hope she is better now, and that all the rest of the family are well.  Will you be so kind as to deliver the accompanying note to Miss Taylor when you see her at church on Sunday?  Dear Ellen, excuse the most horrid scrawl ever penned by mortal hands.  Remember me to your mother and sisters, and—Believe me, E. Nussey’s friend,

‘Charlotte.’

p. 213TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘February 20th, 1837.

‘I read your letter with dismay, Ellen—what shall I do without you?  Why are we so to be denied each other’s society?  It is an inscrutable fatality.  I long to be with you because it seems as if two or three days or weeks spent in your company would beyond measure strengthen me in the enjoyment of those feelings which I have so lately begun to cherish.  You first pointed out to me that way in which I am so feebly endeavouring to travel, and now I cannot keep you by my side, I must proceed sorrowfully alone.

‘Why are we to be divided?  Surely, Ellen, it must be because we are in danger of loving each other too well—of losing sight of the Creator in idolatry of the creature.  At first I could not say, “Thy will be done.”  I felt rebellious; but I know it was wrong to feel so.  Being left a moment alone this morning I prayed fervently to be enabled to resign myself to every decree of God’s will—though it should be dealt forth with a far severer hand than the present disappointment.  Since then, I have felt calmer and humbler—and consequently happier.  Last Sunday I took up my Bible in a gloomy frame of mind; I began to read; a feeling stole over me such as I have not known for many long years—a sweet placid sensation like those that I remember used to visit me when I was a little child, and on Sunday evenings in summer stood by the open window reading the life of a certain French nobleman who attained a purer and higher degree of sanctity than has been known since the days of the early Martyrs.  I thought of my own Ellen—I wished she had been near me that I might have told her how happy I was, how bright and glorious the pages of God’s holy word seemed to me.  But the “foretaste” passed away, and earth and sin returned.  I must see you before you go, Ellen; if you cannot come to Roe Head I will contrive to walk over to Brookroyd, provided you will let me know the time of your departure.  Should you not be at home at Easter I dare not promise to accept your mother’s and sisters’ invitation.  p. 214I should be miserable at Brookroyd without you, yet I would contrive to visit them for a few hours if I could not for a few days.  I love them for your sake.  I have written this note at a venture.  When it will reach you I know not, but I was determined not to let slip an opportunity for want of being prepared to embrace it.  Farewell, may God bestow on you all His blessings.  My darling—Farewell.  Perhaps you may return before midsummer—do you think you possibly can?  I wish your brother John knew how unhappy I am; he would almost pity me.

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘June 8th, 1837.

‘My dearest Ellen,—The inclosed, as you will perceive, was written before I received your last.  I had intended to send it by this, but what you said altered my intention.  I scarce dare build a hope on the foundation your letter lays—we have been disappointed so often, and I fear I shall not be able to prevail on them to part with you; but I will try my utmost, and at any rate there is a chance of our meeting soon; with that thought I will comfort myself.  You do not know how selfishly glad I am that you still continue to dislike London and the Londoners—it seems to afford a sort of proof that your affections are not changed.  Shall we really stand once again together on the moors of Haworth?  I dare not flatter myself with too sanguine an expectation.  I see many doubts and difficulties.  But with Miss Wooler’s leave, which I have asked and in part obtained, I will go to-morrow and try to remove them.—Believe me, my own Ellen, yours always truly,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘January 12th, 1839.

‘My dear kind Ellen,—I can hardly help laughing when I reckon up the number of urgent invitations I have received from you during the last three months.  Had I accepted all or even half of them, the Birstallians would certainly have concluded that I had come to make Brookroyd my permanent residence.  When you set your mind upon it, you have a peculiar way of edging one p. 215in with a circle of dilemmas, so that they hardly know how to refuse you; however, I shall take a running leap and clear them all.  Frankly, my dear Ellen, I cannot come.  Reflect for yourself a moment.  Do you see nothing absurd in the idea of a person coming again into a neighbourhood within a month after they have taken a solemn and formal leave of all their acquaintance?  However, I thank both you and your mother for the invitation, which was most kindly expressed.  You give no answer to my proposal that you should come to Haworth with the Taylors.  I still think it would be your best plan.  I wish you and the Taylors were safely here; there is no pleasure to be had without toiling for it.  You must invite me no more, my dear Ellen, until next Midsummer at the nearest.  All here desire to be remembered to you, aunt particularly.  Angry though you are, I will venture to sign myself as usual (no, not as usual, but as suits circumstances).—Yours, under a cloud,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘May 5th, 1838.

‘My dearest Ellen,—Yesterday I heard that you were ill.  Mr. and Miss Heald were at Dewsbury Moor, and it was from them I obtained the information.  This morning I set off to Brookroyd to learn further particulars, from whence I am but just returned.  Your mother is in great distress about you, she can hardly mention your name without tears; and both she and Mercy wish very much to see you at home again.  Poor girl, you have been a fortnight confined to your bed; and while I was blaming you in my own mind for not writing, you were suffering in sickness without one kind female friend to watch over you.  I should have heard all this before and have hastened to express my sympathy with you in this crisis had I been able to visit Brookroyd in the Easter holidays, but an unexpected summons back to Dewsbury Moor, in consequence of the illness and death of Mr. Wooler, prevented it.  Since that time I have been a fortnight and two days quite alone, Miss Wooler being detained in the interim at Rouse Mill.  You p. 216will now see, Ellen, that it was not neglect or failure of affection which has occasioned my silence, though I fear you will long ago have attributed it to those causes.  If you are well enough, do write to me just two lines—just to assure me of your convalescence; not a word, however, if it would harm you—not a syllable.  They value you at home.  Sickness and absence call forth expressions of attachment which might have remained long enough unspoken if their object had been present and well.  I wish your friends (I include myself in that word) may soon cease to have cause for so painful an excitement of their regard.  As yet I have but an imperfect idea of the nature of your illness—of its extent—or of the degree in which it may now have subsided.  When you can let me know all, no particular, however minute, will be uninteresting to me.  How have your spirits been?  I trust not much overclouded, for that is the most melancholy result of illness.  You are not, I understand, going to Bath at present; they seem to have arranged matters strangely.  When I parted from you near White-lee Bar, I had a more sorrowful feeling than ever I experienced before in our temporary separations.  It is foolish to dwell too much on the idea of presentiments, but I certainly had a feeling that the time of our reunion had never been so indefinite or so distant as then.  I doubt not, my dear Ellen, that amidst your many trials, amidst the sufferings that you have of late felt in yourself, and seen in several of your relations, you have still been able to look up and find support in trial, consolation in affliction, and repose in tumult, where human interference can make no change.  I think you know in the right spirit how to withdraw yourself from the vexation, the care, the meanness of life, and to derive comfort from purer sources than this world can afford.  You know how to do it silently, unknown to others, and can avail yourself of that hallowed communion the Bible gives us with God.  I am charged to transmit your mother’s and sister’s love.  Receive mine in the same parcel, I think it will scarcely be the smallest share.  Farewell, my dear Ellen.

‘C. Brontë.’

p. 217TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘May 15th, 1840.

‘My dear Ellen,—I read your last letter with a great deal of interest.  Perhaps it is not always well to tell people when we approve of their actions, and yet it is very pleasant to do so; and as, if you had done wrongly, I hope I should have had honesty enough to tell you so, so now, as you have done rightly, I shall gratify myself by telling you what I think.

‘If I made you my father confessor I could reveal weaknesses which you do not dream of.  I do not mean to intimate that I attach a high value to empty compliments, but a word of panegyric has often made me feel a sense of confused pleasure which it required my strongest effort to conceal—and on the other hand, a hasty expression which I could construe into neglect or disapprobation has tortured me till I have lost half a night’s rest from its rankling pangs.

‘C. Brontë.

‘P.S.—Don’t talk any more of sending for me—when I come I will send myself.  All send their love to you.  I have no prospect of a situation any more than of going to the moon.  Write to me again as soon as you can.’

Here is the only glimpse that we find of her Penzance relatives in these later years.  They would seem to have visited Haworth when Charlotte was twenty-four years of age.  The impression they left was not a kindly one.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘August 14th, 1840.

‘My dear Ellen,—As you only sent me a note, I shall only send you one, and that not out of revenge, but because like you I have but little to say.  The freshest news in our house is that we had, a fortnight ago, a visit from some of our South of England relations, John Branwell and his wife and daughter.  They have been staying above a month with Uncle Fennell at Crosstone.  They reckon to be very grand folks indeed, and p. 218talk largely—I thought assumingly.  I cannot say I much admired them.  To my eyes there seemed to be an attempt to play the great Mogul down in Yorkshire.  Mr. Branwell was much less assuming than the womenites; he seemed a frank, sagacious kind of man, very tall and vigorous, with a keen active look.  The moment he saw me he exclaimed that I was the very image of my aunt Charlotte.  Mrs. Branwell sets up for being a woman of great talent, tact, and accomplishment.  I thought there was much more noise than work.  My cousin Eliza is a young lady intended by nature to be a bouncing, good-looking girl—art has trained her to be a languishing, affected piece of goods.  I would have been friendly with her, but I could get no talk except about the Low Church, Evangelical clergy, the Millennium, Baptist Noel, botany, and her own conversion.  A mistaken education has utterly spoiled the lass.  Her face tells that she is naturally good-natured, though perhaps indolent.  Her affectations were so utterly out of keeping with her round rosy face and tall bouncing figure, I could hardly refrain from laughing as I watched her.  Write a long letter next time and I’ll write you ditto.  Good-bye.’

We have already read the letters which were written to Miss Nussey during the governess period, and from Brussels.  On her final return from Brussels, Charlotte implores a letter.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Haworth, February 10th, 1844.

‘Dear Ellen,—I cannot tell what occupies your thoughts and time.  Are you ill?  Is some one of your family ill?  Are you married?  Are you dead?  If it be so, you may as well write a word and let me know—for my part, I am again in old England.  I shall tell you nothing further till you write to me.

‘C. Brontë.

‘Write to me directly, that is a good girl; I feel really anxious, and have felt so for a long time to hear from you.’

p. 219She visits Miss Nussey soon afterwards at Brookroyd, and a little later writes as follows:

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘April 7th, 1844.

‘Dear Nell,—I have received your note.  It communicated a piece of good news which I certainly did not expect to hear.  I want, however, further enlightenment on the subject.  Can you tell me what has caused the change in Mary’s plans, and brought her so suddenly back to England?  Is it on account of Mary Dixon?  Is it the wish of her brother, or is it her own determination?  I hope, whatever the reason be, it is nothing which can give her uneasiness or do her harm.  Do you know how long she is likely to stay in England? or when she arrives at Hunsworth?

‘You ask how I am.  I really have felt much better the last week—I think my visit to Brookroyd did me good.  What delightful weather we have had lately.  I wish we had had such while I was with you.  Emily and I walk out a good deal on the moors, to the great damage of our shoes, but I hope to the benefit of our health.

‘Good-bye, dear Ellen.  Send me another of your little notes soon.  Kindest regards to all,

‘C. B.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘June 9th, 1844.

‘My dear Ellen,—Anne and Branwell are now at home, and they and Emily add their request to mine, that you will join us at the beginning of next week.  Write and let us know what day you will come, and how—if by coach, we will meet you at Keighley.  Do not let your visit be later than the beginning of next week, or you will see little of Anne and Branwell as their holidays are very short.  They will soon have to join the family at Scarborough.  Remember me kindly to your mother and sisters.  I hope they are all well.

‘C. B.’

p. 220TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘November 14th, 1844.

‘Dear Ellen,—Your letter came very apropos, as, indeed, your letters always do; but this morning I had something of a headache, and was consequently rather out of spirits, and the epistle (scarcely legible though it be—excuse a rub) cheered me.  In order to evince my gratitude, as well as to please my own inclination, I sit down to answer it immediately.  I am glad, in the first place, to hear that your brother is going to be married, and still more so to learn that his wife-elect has a handsome fortune—not that I advocate marrying for money in general, but I think in many cases (and this is one) money is a very desirable contingent of matrimony.

‘I wonder when Mary Taylor is expected in England.  I trust you will be at home while she is at Hunsworth, and that you, she, and I, may meet again somewhere under the canopy of heaven.  I cannot, dear Ellen, make any promise about myself and Anne going to Brookroyd at Christmas; her vacations are so short she would grudge spending any part of them from home.

‘The catastrophe, which you related so calmly, about your book-muslin dress, lace bertha, etc., convulsed me with cold shudderings of horror.  You have reason to curse the day when so fatal a present was offered you as that infamous little “varmint.”  The perfect serenity with which you endured the disaster proves most fully to me that you would make the best wife, mother, and mistress in the world.  You and Anne are a pair for marvellous philosophical powers of endurance; no spoilt dinners, scorched linen, dirtied carpets, torn sofa-covers, squealing brats, cross husbands, would ever discompose either of you.  You ought never to marry a good-tempered man, it would be mingling honey with sugar, like sticking white roses upon a black-thorn cudgel.  Wi