The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte

by James Tully

  Soon, however, Summer was drawing to a close, and everyone began to dread the prospect of another bleak Winter at Haworth – but no one more than me.

  In later years, Miss Charlotte was to say that it was at some time during that Autumn that she ‘accidentally’ came across Miss Emily’s poems. It made me smile when I heard that for I know for certain that she never came across anything by chance. She was always snooping about, and many are the times that I have seen her going through her brother’s and sisters’ things when she thought nobody was about.

  After she had found the poems, Miss Charlotte had the idea of bringing out a book with some of each of the sisters’ poems in it. That livened things up for a while, and kept Miss Charlotte off my back, but, sadly, she did not ask Master Branwell to take part. I think it was sad because such an interest at that time might have been the making of him.

  Anyway, the book was put together, but letter after letter came saying that no one was interested in it, and so I heard Miss Charlotte coaxing her sisters into paying to have it published. She got her way in the end, but not very easily for none of them had much money and I heard 2 or 3 tiffs about it. As it happened it proved to be money ill-spent, and there were more cross words when only 2 of the books were sold. They had enjoyed doing it, though, and I know that Miss Emily in particular had gained pleasure from the making of it, but for a reason very different from those of her sisters.

  I have had friends who fancied themselves in love, and it seemed to me that all they wanted to do was talk about whoever had taken their fancy, even if they were only simple village lads we had all known for all our lives, and taking no heed when it was evident that they were boring everyone else beyond belief. Poor Miss Emily was not able to talk about Mr Nicholls though. Although she must have longed to tell someone, even her sisters, of the feelings that were so new to her, her normal quiet nature would not have allowed of it and, in any case, I know now that Mr Nicholls had made her see that their love should be kept secret. What with that and her fears about what would happen if what was going on came to light – especially from Mr Brontë – she had not felt able even to speak her lover’s name. That all changed, though, when the book of poems gave her a perfect excuse.

  It came about in this wise, and I can vouch for every word, for I was there at the time.

  The three sisters were in the sitting room one evening when I went in to lay the table and make up the fire. I heard Miss Charlotte going on about how it was not fair that men writers seemed to get their books published more easily than women did, and she said that they might have more of a chance with their book if they were to let it be thought that they were brothers and not sisters. I think that at first she was speaking only in jest, but Miss Anne took it in serious fashion and asked why they should not think of something of the sort. Miss Emily thought that a good idea, but said that if they took on different names they should at least keep their true initials – and the others agreed.

  It was evident that the surname would have to begin with a ‘B’, but whilst her sisters puzzled over which one to choose Miss Emily had no such problem. She saw her chance and snatched at it by suggesting the middle name of the man most on her mind, Arthur Bell Nicholls.

  For a little while there was total silence from the others; in fact it was so quiet that I put down the coal-scuttle and turned around, thinking that I had been making too much noise and they were all looking at me. At that moment, though, Miss Charlotte and Miss Anne both burst out laughing. Miss Emily went red, but soon saw that they were not laughing at her, but were just amused at the idea. They told her that it was a very good choice, and it was agreed.

  Then came the question of which Christian names they could use that would sound as if they were men’s, but without of necessity being so. Again they all thought, but once more it was Miss Emily who came up with the answer. She said that if they were going to use Mr Nicholls’ middle name, why not use the letters of all of his names and see what they could think of? She was not certain that it could be done, but the others thought that it was another amusing notion and they decided to try it.

  Of course, it was Miss Charlotte who, as usual, decided to go first, and she wrote all the letters of Mr Nicholls’ names on a piece of paper and studied it:

  ARTHUR BELL NICHOLLS.

  It was at that moment that I just had to speak out. In the usual way of things I always laid the table before making up the fire and tidying the hearth, but as they were using the table I had seen to the fire first. Now, having washed my hands in the kitchen, I came back to find that I was late in setting the table and would be even later in popping home for a minute the way Miss Charlotte was taking her time about things. I just could not waste my off-time standing about whilst she thought, so I nerved myself and then, in a whisper, I asked Miss Emily if they were going to be much longer.

  Well, a whisper it may have been, but I should have known that Miss Charlotte missed nothing. She gave Miss Emily no chance to answer me but, with her face set, just snapped at me that I should hold my tongue and wait.

  In my usual way, I went red, but this time it was out of great anger at their selfishness and at having been spoken to like a piece of dirt and put in my place. Still, I could do naught about it, so I just flounced away and sat myself down on a little chair in the corner.

  It seemed to me that Miss Charlotte then seemed bent upon making me wait even longer than would otherwise have been the case. She looked at the piece of paper for an age, and then broke off from her thinking to ask if she might use the same letter more times than it came up in the names. For my part I could have told her what she could do with them all, and it would not have been very ladylike, but instead I was made to sit mute whilst her sisters told her that she could, and then to watch, in temper, as she went back to her thinking.

  There was a long, long silence and, if the truth be told, I was at the stage of walking out of the Parsonage there and then never to return – in spite of what Father might have to say – when, at last, my tormentor, as I often thought of her, said in a loud voice that she had chosen ‘CURRER’. Her sisters asked her where she had got that from, and I must say that I wanted to know as well and so I pricked up my ears to hear her remind Miss Emily that it had been the surname of one of the founders of the first school they had gone to. She then turned to Miss Anne and told her that it was her turn – which did not seem to please Miss Emily who was, after all, the next in age – and said that, if possible she should use only those letters that were left after what she had taken out.

  Miss Anne took Miss Charlotte’s piece of paper and, on a piece of her own, she wrote the letters that were left:

  ATHBLLNIHOLLS

  She gazed at them as if transfixed.

  It was fortunate for me that she took nowhere near as long as Miss Charlotte had done, and she very soon gave her name as ‘ACTON’.

  From what they all said then, and from what I have learned since, that was the name of a lady poet of the time, and so they all thought it was a very good choice for a book of poems. The only trouble was that it could be used only if the ‘C’ that Miss Charlotte had taken could be used again, but nobody spoke against that, especially as Miss Charlotte had already done the same with an ‘R’, so ‘ACTON’ it was.

  Then it was Miss Emily’s turn and, in spite of the time ticking away, I could hardly wait to hear what she would choose. Mind you, there was not much left to go on, and I remember thinking at the time that Miss Charlotte probably told Miss Anne to go before Miss Emily so as to make the last turn harder. What was left was:

  HBLLIHLLS

  Miss Emily copied those letters down very carefully, but seemed to be thinking all the time she was writing, and indeed she must have been because, in barely any time at all, she said that she had chosen ‘ELLIS’. The name seemed to please her very much, and I was dying to know why, but I did not get the chance to find out that night for, all of a sudden, time seemed to be important to Miss Charlotte and she sa
id briskly that they should not dally any longer but should get ready for the meal. It was probably spite on my part, out of the mood I was in, but it seemed to me that she was not very pleased that Miss Emily had managed a name so quickly.

  The next day I bided my time until she was doing some ironing and then asked Miss Emily who ‘ELLIS’ was. At first she seemed a little taken aback that I knew anything about it, but then she remembered that I had been there and seemed pleased that I wanted to know. She said that she very much admired a Sarah Ellis, who was not only a writer and a poet but had also started a school for young ladies called Rawdon House. ‘We’ll have to see about getting you in there one day, Martha,’ she joked, and then, smiling away to herself, she put away her ironing and left for the moors – and Mr Nicholls.

  I should say that on the evening when the names were chosen what the sisters were on about was of little interest to me. I listened carefully enough, for I had naught else to do, but all I could really think about was that I was going to miss my break at home through being so late.

  When they at last left the room I gave a long sigh of relief and had the table set quicker than ever before. They had left behind them the scraps of paper that they had worked out the names on and, rather than take them and lay them somewhere, I just poked them into my apron pocket for the time being so that I could get on the faster. It was only when I got home that I found them still there, and so I put them to one side meaning to take them back, but I forgot to pick them up again. Nobody ever asked after them, and somehow they finally found themselves into one of my old exercise books.

  It was not until years later that I found them again, and they sit before me now as I write, silent witnesses to the tale I have just told and bringing back so clearly all the memories of that night and the temper I was in. Over the years I have heard many accounts about how the names were chosen – some of them very silly indeed – but I am now the only one who knows the truth of the matter, and that is why I have taken the bother to tell the full story.

  Seeing the interest that there is in the family these days, Mr Nicholls has told me that probably I could sell these little pieces of paper for a lot of money. Perhaps I shall, for I am forced to live very carefully, but, for the moment at least, looking at them brings back such memories of the sisters and my own early days at the Parsonage that I cannot think of letting them go.

  That year of 1845 meant so much to the family and me that I like to have some little mementoes of those times about me, especially as they serve to remind me of the other happenings that I had better get on and tell about.

  [] Every aspect of his new position and surroundings must have come as something of a cultural upheaval to Nicholls. This was his first curacy and, with little idea of what to expect, he seems to have been quite shocked at the cheerlessness of the Parsonage, his lodgings, and Haworth village. (Knowing what the Parsonage was like, I think it is safe to assume that Brown’s house was even more undesirable: at least the outside privy at the former was a double-seater!)

  Nicholls was a bright young man, only recently come from undergraduate life, and the civilization and delights of Dublin. There is no evidence that he had any sense of vocation, and it seems likely that, as with so many before and since, he entered the Church only because it presented the prospect of a secure and undemanding life. Now he was not at all happy with his surroundings, especially as the lack of professional people meant that he was without any congenial male company.

  It was therefore almost inevitable that he should have been drawn to the opposite sex for solace and companionship and, as it would have been unthinkable for him to have been associated with any of the village girls, that he should have turned his attention to the Brontë sisters.

  His first approaches were to Charlotte, and rumours about the couple were still going the rounds over a year later. Indeed, in 1846, Ellen Nussey actually asked Charlotte if it was true that she was engaged to Nicholls.

  Charlotte’s reply was scathing: ‘A cold far-away sort of civility are the only terms on which I have ever been with Mr Nicholls.’ In that same letter, and still referring to curates, she stated that: ‘They regard me as an old maid, and I regard them, one and all, as highly uninteresting, narrow and unattractive specimens of the coarser sex.’ The redolence of sour grapes is unmistakable, and perhaps smacks a little of the lady protesting too much.

  She may very well have thought little of Nicholls a year before, but then she was still hoping against hope that something would come of her relationship with M. Héger. By 1846, however, the case was altered. She had been forced to the realization that there was no future for her with her erstwhile lover, and would have welcomed any overtures from her father’s assistant. The trouble was that, by then, she was too late – he had turned his attentions elsewhere.

  Maybe Nicholls first made a set at Charlotte because he detected her sensuality, and he may also have heard whispers about M. Héger. However, he does not appear to have been very distraught at being rebuffed, perhaps because Charlotte was not exactly a personable woman.

  Instead – Martha tells us – he sought consolation with Emily, who was the only other daughter at home at that time. She was his age and, being the sort of woman that she was, she had been kinder to him than Charlotte from the outset.

  There can be no doubt but that Emily was the most attractive of the three sisters. In later years, former servants at the Parsonage would declare that she was the prettiest of the children, with beautiful eyes and sensuous lips. She was also the tallest, and had ‘a lithesome graceful figure’. Nevertheless she was a very reserved young lady.

  It has been suggested by more than one writer that she had lesbian tendencies. I cannot subscribe to that view. All the signs are that she was a passionate woman, but that her shyness with strangers was so pronounced that any male overtures had been doomed from the start. That had not prevented her from keeping a watching brief over her sisters’ affaires however – which was a habit that had earned her the nickname of ‘The Major’ from Anne’s admirer, Mr Weightman.

  It is probable that the unfortunate attachments of her sisters had increased her natural reserve towards men but, in addition, her father was always very sarcastic about would-be suitors and Emily would have wished to avoid being the butt of such comments. Instead, she had sublimated her natural instincts with her poetry, but Nature has a way of triumphing when the conditions are right and this, with Emily feeling very much the Cinderella of the family, was just such a time.

  While Charlotte was mooning over M. Héger, and cudgelling her brains for schemes to make money, it was Emily who, as usual, was overseeing the running of the house. She must have been very lonely, especially when Anne was still away, but that was nothing new because, generally speaking, she had been a very private and rather introverted person for the whole of her adult life. Now her main relaxation was to walk over the moors, and it does not take a great effort to imagine her solitary figure wandering across that vast expanse of wild countryside.

  Then Nicholls arrived, and one lonely spirit recognised another.

  At first Emily felt little but pity for him, and sympathized with his situation, but he constantly sought her out and soon his gentle words began to have their effect. Dormant yearnings were awakened and, despite herself, she began to respond in ways that she would not have thought possible. Came the day when she, the most matter-of-fact and down-to-earth of the Brontë sisters, realized that she was deeply in love.

  One has only to read the diary note, written on her twenty-seventh birthday, to feel her general pleasure with life: ‘. . . merely desiring that everybody could be as comfortable as myself as undesponding.’ To those not knowing of her secret love, her happiness and optimism seem remarkable in view of her apparent situation, and that of her family.

  I have written ‘secret’ love, because secret it had to be. As well as keeping it from her father, Emily did not wish her sisters to know what she was up to either, especially the domi
neering Charlotte. She could not have borne her, of all people, to be privy to the secret. From past experience, she knew that Charlotte would immediately start offering advice, and would probably use the opportunity to go on, even more, about M. Héger. Then there was the fact that her sisters would have derived great amusement from knowing that ‘The Major’, of all people, was in love, and that would have been unacceptable to such a proud woman.

  Nicholls also had good reason for requiring the matter to be kept quiet. Whatever he felt for Emily at that time – and Martha believed that he was genuinely fond of her – he had no intention of tying himself to such a girl, and such a family.

  So they met, as they thought, in secret and, whilst sometimes it was possible to steal a few moments of privacy in the Parsonage, it was usually upon the moors that they came together because of their mutual love of walking over that majestic landscape. On occasion, the villagers remarked that Emily appeared ‘transfigured’ when returning from her absences there. She had loved those open spaces all her life, but now they held an additional delight.

  Of course it was too much to hope that their meetings would pass unnoticed. There were always villagers about on the moors, but the inquisitive eyes of one seventeen-year-old girl saw more than most.

  Martha was equally shrewd in her observation of Charlotte’s devious discovery of Emily’s poems. Charlotte was not averse to being ‘economical with the truth’. In her ‘Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell’, which appears at the front of the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, she wrote: ‘One day, in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume of verses in my sister Emily’s handwriting . . .’ Now that has to be a blatant lie. Emily poured out her soul in her poetry, and that introverted young woman would never, ever, have left such works lying about for anyone to read, especially inquisitive Charlotte.