The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte

by James Tully

  Having told Ellen of Anne’s wishes, she went on, in the same letter, to raise what she described as ‘serious objections’ against Ellen falling in with them. She wrote that it would be too terrible were her sister to be taken ill far from home and alone with Ellen. ‘The idea of it distresses me inexpressibly, and I tremble whenever she alludes to the project of a journey.’ (Well that part, at least, was true!) ‘If a journey must be made then June would be a safer month – if we could reach June . . .’ Charlotte asked Ellen if she would: ‘Write such an answer to this note as I can show Anne.’ Then came the devious part. She also asked Ellen if she would, at the same time, write another, private, letter to her, Charlotte, ‘on a separate piece of paper’. Oh what a tangled web we weave . . . !

  Ellen did as she had been requested. She wrote to Anne and said that she would go, but her ‘friends’ had advised her against doing so, and May was a trying month, and she was expecting visitors before the end of May anyway – every excuse under the sun. Charlotte must have been well pleased with the results of her machinations, but her pleasure soon turned to dismay when Anne, to her credit, would have none of it. She wrote to Ellen herself, and told her that if she could not accompany her she hoped Charlotte would. In doing that she no doubt hoped to force Ellen’s hand, but she did not – much to Charlotte’s satisfaction. However, Charlotte was well aware of how determined Anne was to get away and so she appeared to bow to the inevitable and stated that she would go with Anne, even if that meant that their father would have to fend for himself. That was because, as we know now, Charlotte had come to the conclusion that, if Anne was really set upon going, she was the one who would have to accompany her to ensure her silence.

  Even so, Charlotte still played for time. In a letter to Ellen, she said that she would go with Anne, but only were she of the same mind in a month or six weeks. She suggested that Ellen might join them.

  At first it puzzled me as to why Charlotte would have wanted a third party present should she be the one who had to kill her sister. However, it was not long before I saw why. Obviously she had come to the conclusion that, were it absolutely necessary, she would be willing to carry out the deed, but she was worried lest anything should go awry at Scarborough which would place her under suspicion. Even if everything should go according to plan, she felt that a few malicious tongues would be bound to wag. What would be needed, she thought, was an independent witness to events who would be able to testify on her behalf should that become necessary.

  On 16 April, Charlotte also wrote to Mr Williams. Her main reason for doing so was because he had, once again, recommended homeopathy, but this time the idea was rejected outright. However, she also told him about the proposed trip, and said that she felt torn between the two duties of either going with her sister or staying with her father, but that it was ‘Papa’s wish’ that she should accompany Anne.

  One cannot help but wonder how true that was because it is clear, from numerous examples, that if Charlotte wanted something badly enough she got it – with or without her father’s consent. She never had any compunction about going off and leaving the old man – even when he was older and frailer – and had raised the question of his welfare only as an excuse to try to keep Anne at home.

  So Charlotte agreed to go, but still she played for time because, secretly, she hoped that all talk of journeys was academic, and that her sister would be dead by then.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live.’

  Isaiah 38:1

  The days passed, and Miss Anne’s health did not seem to get any worse but I noticed that she was becoming quieter and quieter, and she seemed very sad. I would try to cheer her up with funny tales about village folk who she knew, and sometimes she would give a little smile. It was evident, though, that something was troubling her mind, and one day she told me that she had a feeling that something bad was going to happen. I asked her what she meant, but she said that she did not know, she just felt very ill at ease.

  What I did not know until Mr Nicholls told me was that him and Miss Charlotte felt then that she was becoming more and more of a threat to them, and that even Miss Charlotte had had to agree with him that the sooner she was out of the way the better.

  The trouble for them, though, was how her death could be brought about in a short time without causing folk to talk. Everybody had taken it for granted that Master Branwell would finally drink himself to the grave; and Miss Emily’s death had passed with no one saying anything; but were a third member of the family to die in the Parsonage in under 8 months it would be bound to cause a stir. Even Dr Wheelhouse might have been forced to take notice.

  Mr Nicholls has told me that they talked about the matter a lot, but it was him who found the answer in the end. He told Miss Charlotte that if she could keep her sister quiet for a while, in the hope that she would soon die a natural death, then all well and good. They would give her a little longer, but if not she would have to go and they would have to take their chances. Seemingly, Miss Charlotte told him that she thought she could do that, but only for a short time, and she agreed that if Miss Anne did not then seem to be sinking fast Mr Nicholls’ plan would have to be the answer. That meant that Miss Charlotte would have to go to Scarborough with Miss Anne – for that was where she was now set upon going – and it would be up to her to give Miss Anne the fatal dose of poison there.

  When May came Miss Anne seemed much better though, and I was so pleased for her. At the time, and not knowing what I know now, I thought that Miss Charlotte was pleased as well because she told some of us that she and Miss Nussey had made plans to take Miss Anne away to Scarborough and that, nearer the time, she would tell us what she wanted us to do in looking after the house and Mr Brontë whilst they were away.

  That made me even happier, because the Parsonage was always a very different place when Miss Charlotte was away. We were all more cheerful then, without her nosing about and finding fault and giving us more work. It was odd, though, because we all seemed to work much harder when she was away, and certainly we got far more done and more quickly. Also we were able to sort out our hours to suit ourselves, and that meant that we could have time off if there was something special that we wanted to do.

  I think it must have been on May 23rd that they left, because I know it was on a Wednesday about that time of the month. There was great excitement at getting their boxes ready, and even Miss Charlotte seemed in high spirits and was talking to everybody for a change. I asked her how far it was to Scarborough and she said it was about 100 miles, but that they were going on a train and that Miss Nussey would join them at Leeds. We were all allowed to wave them off, and then we helped Mr Brontë back to the house and went about our work with very light hearts.

  A week passed, and a lovely week it was. Everyone in the Parsonage was in good spirits, and it was so warm and sunny. I remember that I even went for a long walk on the moors one night with a lad from Stanbury who I had been seeing, on and off, for a time.

  It was a week to the day after they had left that we were all called together by Mr Nicholls. Such a thing had never happened before and we had a feeling that something must be badly amiss, and wondered why Mr Brontë was not talking to us himself. It so happened that I was the last to get into the sitting room, and I thought that Mr Nicholls was looking black at me because of that, but I soon came to see that he had on what I always called his put-on face that he usually kept for sermons.

  He spoke very slowly I recall, in his lovely deep Irish voice, and began by saying that Mr Brontë had that morning had some very bad news which had so upset him that he had asked Mr Nicholls to impart it to us. Then he told us what it was, and we could not believe what we were hearing. He said that Miss Anne had died at Scarborough 2 days before, and went on to say that it was felt that it would cause Mr Brontë even more hurt if her body was brought back to Haworth, and so Miss Charlotte would see to it that she was buried at Scarborough straigh
taway.

  As I have said, we found it all very hard to believe, especially as Miss Anne had looked so much better when they set off, and we were all in tears. Miss Anne had been such a quiet, gentle soul, and now not only was she dead, but she was to be buried miles away amongst strangers. Somehow it did not seem right.

  Mr Nicholls made no mention of how Miss Charlotte was feeling. All he said about her was that it was her who had written with the bad news, and that her and Miss Nussey were seeing to the funeral and she would be home later. In the meantime we were all to carry on with our work as usual, except that he wanted us to pay special heed of Mr Brontë.

  So it was yet another sad time at the Parsonage, with folk coming and going all the while to see Mr Brontë. That meant extra work for us, but none of us cared because we were all so sorry for the poor old man. Of course, at the backs of our minds, was the thought that we would soon have Miss Charlotte back. Apart from Miss Aykroyd, I do not think that any of the others knew that there was little love lost between her and Miss Anne, and so they all expected that she would be back in tears as soon as possible to comfort her father.

  To their surprise, though, but not to mine, that did not happen. Another week passed without sight or sound of her, and it was only when my Father asked Mr Brontë about her that we found out that her and Miss Nussey were going to have a long holiday together. That caused quite a lot of talk in the village. Miss Charlotte was not generally liked there, and folk felt that she should have come back to her father instead of gadding about in foreign parts.

  When all came to all, it was going on 4 weeks after Miss Anne had died before she came back, and although she tried to put on an act for others it was evident to us in the Parsonage that her and Miss Nussey had had a very good time at different places on the coast, and that she was not at all sad at the loss of her sister.

  Later, I learned from Mr Nicholls that she told him that she had dallied because she dreaded having to come back to the Parsonage and ‘awful Haworth’. The only things that had brought her back, she said, was knowing that he was waiting for her and that she now had no brothers or sisters to spoil her life.

  In point of fact, she could hardly have done anything else but come back, but in the light of what was to happen later she would have done better to have stayed away.

  [] It would appear that Nicholls never told Martha what, exactly, took place at Scarborough. Certainly she gives no details, and therefore it is necessary for me to fill this gap from the information which I have unearthed.

  On 16 May, Charlotte sent Ellen the time of the train to Leeds that she and Anne would be catching, and warned her that she would be shocked at Anne’s condition. It does not appear that Anne appreciated just how quickly she was declining, and Charlotte did not want Ellen to make any remarks which would bring the truth home to her. The last thing that Charlotte needed at that stage of the plan was for Anne to panic and start thinking yet again about unburdening her guilty conscience.

  Ellen was told that Charlotte was making no special arrangements for anybody to look after papa – which was a far cry from when she had been unable to go away with Anne because she had to stay at home to care for him! Apparently ‘Mr Nicholls’ had offered his services, but papa would not hear of it. That would have surprised nobody as, according to Martha, it was common knowledge that Mr Brontë had very little time for his assistant.

  The day for their journey duly arrived, and the three women travelled first to York and thence to Scarborough, where they arrived on 25 May. Anne could not have felt ill on the following day because she drove a donkey cart on the sands for an hour, and she was obviously quite well on Sunday 27 May also. She walked to church in the morning – and quite a walk it was – strolled on the beach in the afternoon and, as Ellen was to tell Mrs Gaskell, the night was passed ‘without any apparent accession of illness’.

  Anne arose at seven o’clock on the Monday and performed most of her toilet herself, ‘by her expressed wish’. After that, as Ellen would say later, nothing untoward happened until about eleven that morning when, all of a sudden, Anne spoke of feeling a change. ‘She believed she had not long to live. Could she reach home alive, if we prepared immediately for departure?’

  It was all very abrupt, and totally unexpected. One moment Anne was, apparently, quite well, the next she felt so ill that she believed herself to be at death’s door. Surely, then, it was between seven and eleven o’clock that morning when Charlotte administered the fatal dose. I have wondered often whether Anne suspected what her sister had done to her, and whether that was why she wanted to get home if at all possible. She may have felt that she would be safer in the Parsonage.

  A doctor was summoned, and there can be little doubt but that he was primed by Charlotte before he saw the patient. One can almost hear her: ‘It’s my sister, doctor. She has had tuberculosis for months. I’m very worried about her because there’s a history of the disease in our family – in fact my three other sisters died of it.’ What doctor would have suspected anything sinister, especially when the words came from an apparently prim and respectable little spinster? It would have sounded so innocent, and the doctor would have examined Anne with the probability of consumption planted firmly in his mind. Any signs of vomiting or purging could then have been mistaken for the symptoms of tuberculosis in a late stage.

  We do not know how thoroughly he examined her but, almost immediately, he told Anne that she was dying. He called back two or three times, but there was little he could do to save his patient and she died at about two o’clock in the afternoon.

  It is worth noting that, apparently, very few people at the guesthouse thought Anne to be particularly ill; ‘Dinner’ was actually announced through the half-open door to her room just as she died!

  Her death certificate states that she died of ‘Consumption. 6 months. Not certified.’ Now that information could have come only from Charlotte. No doctor’s name appears on the ‘certificate’, obviously because he was not prepared to certify the cause of death, but, yet again, no postmortem examination was held.

  Anne’s death was actually registered two days after the event, and by Ellen Nussey.

  Charlotte must have been both relieved and quite pleased with herself. Her sister had been disposed of neatly, with nobody suspicious; she had an independent witness to the death; and she had even arranged matters so that Ellen’s name, and not hers, appeared on the death certificate. Arthur would be pleased. Now all that was needed was to tidy up the loose ends.

  Nicholls and Charlotte had made their plans carefully. They were determined that there was not going to be another Brontë funeral at Haworth, with all the accompanying publicity. Were too many people to get to know of Anne’s death too soon somebody might start putting two and two together, and the dangers of exhumation were very real. They had, therefore, decided that Anne would be buried at Scarborough, quietly and as quickly as possible – and that was what happened.

  Anne died on 28 May 1849. Charlotte wrote to their father on the following day, told him the sad news, and informed him that his daughter was to be buried so soon that he would hardly be able to arrive in time for the funeral. She did not consult him, he was told. Now I find that peculiar, by any yardstick. Had everything been above board, what was the rush? There was ample time to consult her father, and to ascertain his wishes, because the mail then was far quicker than it is today. By what right did she take it upon herself to have her sister’s remains interred so far from home? The excuse given at the time was that it was felt that it would upset the old man too much to have yet another family funeral at Haworth. That is rubbish. Mr Brontë was a hard old nut and, if Charlotte is to be believed, he had been prepared for Anne’s death for some time. Why, it was only two months earlier that he had been quoted as saying that he considered his daughter’s situation ‘most precarious’. No, it just will not wash. Anne was buried at Scarborough because that was part of Nicholls’ plan, and for no other reason.

  T
he doctor who attended Anne offered to go to the funeral, but Charlotte was not having that and his offer was declined, politely but firmly. In the event, the only people present at the church were Charlotte, Ellen, their old headmistress, Miss Margaret Wooler, who lived in Scarborough, and one of Ellen’s female neighbours who just happened to be visiting the town and would not be put off.

  Charlotte then went through the motions of ordering a headstone for her sister’s grave, but she wasted little time on the matter. The inscription reads: ‘Here lie the remains of Anne Brontë, daughter of the Revd. P. Brontë, Incumbent of Haworth Yorkshire. She died, Aged 28, May 28th 1849.’ It will be noted that there is not one word of sentiment. Charlotte was quite content to use up four words to inform the world of what her father did for a living, but there is no commendation to the Lord, no ‘beloved daughter’, not even a ‘Rest in Peace’. So much for Charlotte’s oft-expressed protestations of her affection for her sister.

  Charlotte stayed in Scarborough for twelve days after Anne’s death. However, she did not bother to ensure that her instructions about her sister’s headstone were carried out. Instead, she and Ellen made their way down the East Coast. It was to be three years before she returned to Scarborough, and even then it was only because she happened to be in Filey, and was able to pop over on a day trip. At that time she told Ellen that she wanted to see that the headstone was all right, saying that the matter had long ‘lain heavy on my mind’ – so heavy, in fact, that it took three years for her to get round to doing anything about it!

  In the event, she discovered that there were no less than five errors in the lettering, and therefore ‘gave the necessary directions’. She never visited her sister’s grave again and, to this day, the stone still gives Anne’s age at the time of her death as twenty-eight, whereas she was actually twenty-nine. What more can one say?