The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte

by James Tully

  According to Martha, the reality was that Nicholls was proceeding quietly with his deadly plan, and one is able to plot his steady progress from a calendar of letters:

  21 January:

  ‘Indigestion – loss of appetite – and such like annoyances’ (Charlotte)

  23 January:

  ‘Not well’ (Nicholls)

  29 January:

  ‘Continues unwell’ (Nicholls)

  1 February:

  Illness will be of ‘some duration’ (Nicholls/MacTurk)

  14 February:

  ‘. . . completely prostrated with weakness and sickness and frequent fever’ (Nicholls)

  27 February:

  ‘I am reduced to great weakness – the skeleton emaciation is the same’ (Charlotte) ‘My sufferings are very great – my nights indescribable – sickness with scarce a reprieve – I strain until what I vomit is mixed with blood’ (Charlotte)

  30 March:

  ‘My dear Daughter is very ill, and apparently on the verge of the grave’ (Mr Brontë)

  31 March:

  Dead.

  All that time Nicholls was penning letters supposedly dictated by his wife, and censoring the few of which he was aware that she had written herself. He ensured that there were many favourable references to himself, and that it was made clear that it was by her wish that no doctors outside Haworth were now being consulted. Dr MacTurk is heard of no more: he had served his purpose. Charlotte was now under the supervision of the Haworth practitioner Dr Ingham – who had been well primed with the ‘opinion’ planted on Dr MacTurk.

  Dr Ingham appears to have been as well suited to Nicholls’ purposes as the credulous Dr Wheelhouse had been. For one thing, he was apparently in the habit of prescribing for patients whom he had not examined. Around 20 January, when Charlotte herself was beginning to feel really unwell, she wrote a short note to the good doctor: ‘I regret to have to disturb you at a time when you are suffering from illness, but I merely wish to ask if you can send any medicine for our old servant Tabby.’

  It is obvious that Charlotte – who quoted none of Tabby’s symptoms – took it for granted that he, ill or not, would do as she had requested, so we may presume that it was a common practice of his. As it happened, Tabby was dead within a month – little wonder then that Nicholls stayed with Dr Ingham!

  I think that Tabitha’s death destroyed whatever little faith Charlotte may have had in Dr Ingham. She wrote to Joe Taylor’s wife, Amelia, and told her: ‘Medicine I have quite discontinued. If you can send me anything that will do good – do.’ In her next letter, she told her friend: ‘The medicines produced no perceptible effect on me but I thank you for them all the same. I would not let Arthur write to Dr. Hemingway – I know it would be wholly useless.’

  I find all that very contradictory. After telling Amelia that she had ‘quite discontinued’ taking medicine she went on, in the next breath, to ask her to send some – and took it! Obviously it was only Dr Ingham’s medicine, administered by Nicholls, that had been discontinued.

  There are other aspects of the letter which I find quite peculiar. It is very odd that she should beg for any sort of medicine from a friend and yet, we are asked to believe, she would not allow her husband to write to a doctor. That contradiction apart, she was in no position to forbid Nicholls to do anything.

  Of course, the complete explanation is that few of the letters contained Charlotte’s own words, whereas Nicholls’ involvement is quite apparent. He was ensuring that no blame for what was to come could be attributed to him, and therefore Amelia and the world were told that it was at his wife’s request that Dr MacTurk’s services were dispensed with and Dr Hemingway not consulted. She alone is held responsible for discontinuing with the medicine prescribed by Dr Ingham whereas Nicholls, by inference, is shown in a favourable light as encouraging her to seek other remedies. In reality, of course, Nicholls probably did not care from whom she received medicines if he was dosing them all!

  The fact of the matter is that, at the end, Charlotte was doomed. With visitors forbidden and her mail censored, she was kept in virtual isolation by a husband who hated her and was plotting her death. There was no one to whom she could have appealed. Tabby was gone and, much as he detested Nicholls, her father would probably have thought her hysterical. She might, of course, have turned to Martha, but I think that she sensed that she could no longer trust even her.

  Until Charlotte’s ‘illness’ became much worse, Martha had presented her usual friendly, but somewhat servile, face to her mistress. However, her attitude had changed abruptly once Charlotte became really ill, and especially after the Will was signed, and Charlotte could not but have noticed that she was no longer the apparently willing and obliging Martha whom she had always known. We cannot know what construction she placed upon her servant’s change of attitude, but I am convinced that it was that change which finally broke Charlotte and left her feeling completely abandoned.

  Her mental and physical torment can be only imagined as she lay there for hours, neglected and utterly alone. She must have suspected by then what Nicholls was up to, but she seems to have hoped against hope that she was wrong. It would appear that she dreaded the sound of Nicholls’ footsteps upon the stairs and yet, at the same time, from what Martha tells us, she lived for his visits.

  As the weeks passed, and she sank lower and lower, who knows what apparitions from the past were conjured up in her fevered mind. Whatever her transgressions, she went a long way towards expiating them during those last grim days.

  According to Martha, it was during that period, when Charlotte felt so isolated, and was so very, very vulnerable, that Nicholls took advantage of her state of confusion.

  I can imagine that, since the time of their honeymoon, he had been on and on at her to rescind the marriage settlement. Always she refused, steadfastly, to do so, and his anger had been evident in the increasingly hostile attitude which he had adopted, and which had frightened her so much. Now, however, all that changed and, with a suddenness that threw her off guard completely, Nicholls began to devote himself entirely to her needs. He showered such affection upon her that she, in her loneliness and despair, began to think that perhaps she had misjudged him which, of course, was just what he had hoped for.

  He seems to have lost no time in pressing home his advantage. Martha tells us of the soothing words which he whispered to Charlotte as he spooned more dosed broth down her, and of the pathetic gratitude with which she responded to his ministrations. Soon she appears to have been his to do as he would with, and then he had no trouble whatsoever in persuading her that it was only right and proper that she should make a Will in his favour, thus circumventing all the provisions of the marriage settlement. As we know, the witnesses were Martha and the almost blind Mr Brontë and I have often wondered whether the old man realized what he was signing.

  Under the terms of the Will, Nicholls was the sole beneficiary unless his wife left children. Had that been the case, he would have had only the interest on the money invested at his disposal, with the principal passing to any progeny on his death. It was fairly standard wording, and had caused Nicholls no problems. He had known that there would be no offspring, and had agreed that those provisions be included merely to humour Charlotte in her imagined pregnancy. What if, though, despite all the evidence to the contrary, there was the slightest possibility in his mind that Charlotte might be pregnant? That would have been a strong additional motive for getting on and killing her as quickly as possible before the child was born.

  Making the Will was a fatal mistake on her part because Charlotte Nicholls, née Brontë, died just six weeks later – in the early hours of Saturday, 31 March 1855. The accommodating Dr Ingham certified the cause of death as being ‘Phthisis 3 months’.

  Not being a medical man, I had to look up the definition of ‘Phthisis’. Apparently it means ‘wasting’, and is a general term applied to the progressive weakening and loss of weight occasioned by all forms of
tuberculosis, especially that of the lungs. There is, however, absolutely no evidence that Charlotte was suffering from tuberculosis; not even the possibility is mentioned anywhere. I think, therefore, that we may take it as read that, relying upon the family’s medical history, Nicholls planted the idea of tuberculosis in Dr MacTurk’s mind, just as Charlotte had done with the doctor called to Anne, and that either MacTurk or Nicholls did the same with Dr Ingham.

  It would have suited Nicholls very well to attribute his wife’s illness and death to consumption – but only after she had been disposed of safely. He had not wanted well-wishers beating a path to the Parsonage while he was poisoning her, and that may be why he never referred to tuberculosis in any of his correspondence. For just the same reason, the probability is that he persuaded the doctors not to distress his wife by mentioning the then deadly disease, and encouraged her in the idea that she might be pregnant.

  Obviously, Dr Ingham was not sure of what had killed Charlotte. He guessed, and he guessed at tuberculosis because he had been pointed in that direction. However – and as in the previous deaths – there was no postmortem examination, nor were any official questions asked. One cannot help but wonder what would have happened had someone in authority acted upon what Martha states her father was saying.

  Nicholls must have been elated after his wife’s death. Not only had he rid himself of her, but it was only a matter of time before he would have his hands on her money and other possessions. There was also the possibility of more, once he had had the opportunity to go through the papers of her siblings at his ease. However, he had his priorities, and one in particular gave him great pleasure. He could not wait to tell Ellen Nussey of Charlotte’s death, and wrote to her only a few hours after it occurred!

  I read his letter with a sense of incredulity. No mention was made of tuberculosis, instead he told Ellen that: ‘Charlotte died last night of exhaustion. For the last two or three weeks we had become very uneasy about her, but it was not until Sunday evening that it became apparent that her sojourn with us was likely to be short. We intend to bury her on Wednesday morning.’

  That letter was written on 31 March. Charlotte’s ‘illness’ had started at the beginning of January, and by mid-February she was ‘completely prostrated with weakness and sickness and frequent fever’. A week later she wrote of her ‘skeleton emaciation’, and of blood being mixed with her vomit. Nevertheless, according to Nicholls, it was to be at least another two weeks before ‘we’ became ‘very uneasy’.

  It makes me wonder what it would have taken to worry him!

  It will also be noticed that, although he had had five clear days in which to do so, Nicholls had not told her closest friend that his wife was at death’s door – that news came to her from Mr Brontë on the day before Charlotte died.

  Ellen arrived at the Parsonage just before lunchtime on the Sunday, and was asked by Mr Brontë to stay over until the funeral. That she did, but she left Haworth immediately after and never saw Mr Brontë or Nicholls again.

  From Nicholls’ point of view, the situation after Charlotte’s death was very satisfactory and at last he was able to contemplate his future with equanimity. In fact, only one thing prevented him from being a completely happy man. That, of course, was the fact that, try as he might, he had been unable to find Anne’s book. He had searched for it high and low, ransacking Charlotte’s possessions, the room in which she had died and, later, the rest of the house, but with no success. Whilst he was doing so he must have wondered whether the so-called diary had simply been something that Charlotte had invented in order to substantiate what Anne had told her, or whether Martha had come across it after Charlotte’s death and now had it hidden away. She had never mentioned it though, and he did not like to raise the subject in case, by doing so, he told her what she might otherwise not have known, so he decided to let sleeping dogs lie for the moment. Should Martha have it he would be no worse off than he was already, because he felt sure that she would never act against him unless he crossed her – and that was something that he did not intend to do. If, however, the book was still hidden away somewhere in the house he would have plenty of opportunities to continue to look for it because, if possible, he intended to be around for some time to come.

  Nicholls had no vocation, and he was not ambitious. All that he had ever wanted was a quiet, comfortable life, and he had been considering how that might now be achieved. He had no great love for England or the English, and his first thoughts had been of returning to Ireland. There he would have been amongst his own kind, and away from all the unhappy and unpleasant memories of Haworth, the Parsonage and the Brontës. However, he knew that he would still have to earn his living, and that was easier said than done for a Protestant clergyman in the south of Ireland. It was true that he had Charlotte’s money, but that would not keep him for life, and it was not enough to make an adequate investment in a business.

  Thinking things over, he obviously realized that he could, however, really scoop the kitty if he stayed at the Parsonage and played his cards right.

  There were two main considerations which led him to that conclusion, and the first was old Mr Brontë. He was nearly seventy-nine years of age, and not very robust. Seventy-nine was a good age, even by today’s standards, and he could not have been expected to last for much longer. With his own savings and from what the deaths of Emily and Anne had yielded him – for both had died intestate – he had a reasonable amount of capital. There was also the furniture, and other possessions, in the Parsonage, plus some potentially valuable memorabilia which had belonged to his family. Nicholls reasoned that all could be his if only he could also persuade the old man, somehow, to make a Will in his favour.

  The other matter which I think gave him food for thought was his, then largely intuitive, feeling that, in some way or other, there was still a lot of money to be made from the works of the Brontë sisters.

  He therefore decided that, were he allowed to do so, he would stay.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.’

  Psalms 73:12

  What happened next was that, of all things, I began to feel very tired – almost as if life was draining out of me. It was hard work to put one leg before the other, and I could hardly keep my eyes open. Looking back, I see now just how much the things that had happened had taken out of me. What with looking after the Parsonage, Mr Brontë, Miss Aykroyd and Madam, and being ill myself, it had all been too much for me.

  Once again, Mother was the first to notice how quiet I was and said I looked as if I needed a rest. Then she must have had a word with Father, because the next thing I heard was that he was going to have a word with Mr Brontë. The upshot of it all was that it was arranged that I should go to stay at Mrs Dean’s Almshouses in Leeds for a while, and Mother said that she was going to see to it that everything in the Parsonage was taken care of whilst I was away.

  I must say that it was not a prospect that pleased me greatly, for I felt too tired to go anywhere and I had looked forward to some time alone with Mr Nicholls, but even he said that I should go, and so I did.

  When I came back I felt different again, but there was a shock awaiting me because, of all people, Father had taken to his bed. I had never known him do that before and so I knew that something must be badly amiss, but even so, when I saw him I could not believe how ill he had become in such a short while. He was as white as his pillow-case, and was having great trouble in breathing, with the air making terrible sounds as it went in and out. Not only that, he had a bowl by him and was all the time coughing and spitting into it, so that I felt sick to watch him and to hear it.

  Of course, it all meant more work for Mother, but she made no complaint, although it was evident to me that I should have to go back to work straightaway as she had enough on her plate. That did not bother me though, because I felt quite my old self again – and I was dying to see Mr Nicholls.

&nb
sp; It was lovely when I did, and he hugged me so close that I thought he would never let me go, and one thing led to another so that us meeting again was all that I had looked forward to.

  Then it was a case of getting the Parsonage back to rights as I liked it, and for that I needed help. Mother and my sister Eliza had done their best whilst I was away, but a lot of the little jobs had been left to one side, and I knew that it would take it out of me again if I tried to do it all myself,

  I spoke to Mr Brontë about it, with Mr Nicholls there, and it was agreed that I could keep the young girl from the village who had been taken on so that I could deal with Madam when she was ill. That is what I had hoped for because she was one of my friend Milly Oldfield’s young sisters, and I knew she needed the money. Before I went away there had been talk of getting rid of her after Madam’s death, and I had half-expected her to be gone when I got back, but Mr Brontë saw that I needed the help and Mr Nicholls would back me up in anything.

  So we kept young Emma on, and me and her worked wonders. She was not very big for her age, but she was strong and willing and was a great help to me. I made sure that she was treated a lot better than I had been at her age, and she paid me back by being cheerful and ready for anything. Most of all, although Mr Nicholls and me were always careful, I felt sure that she would keep her mouth shut – even with Milly – if she saw or heard aught that she should not have done as she was so grateful to me for keeping her job.

  The weeks went by, and once the Parsonage was as I wanted it life became very pleasing and I was content for the first time in a long while. Only Father gave me anything to worry about for he seemed to be getting worse every time I saw him, and he had shrunk away to only half the man he was, and it seemed such a shame to see him lying there in bed with the weather outside so lovely. The doctor kept coming in, but he did little or no good, and in the end we all knew that Father was not going to get better.