by James Tully
By the time we were leaving I had calmed myself and I was able to stand by the rail on deck and wave him goodbye. He waved back, very slowly and, I thought, sadly, and then I watched until we were out of the harbour and I could see him no longer.
Life went on quietly back at the Manor House for the rest of the year and soon it was Christmas and the New Year and my spirits began to lift a little with the thought that Spring would not be that long a-coming.
I kept writing to Mr Nicholls, and he to me, but as usual his letters told nothing of his feelings for me and sometimes I wondered whether he was afeared of putting them into words. That did not bother me though for I knew how he felt and I looked forward so much to seeing him again in the Summer.
So all was going quite well until one of the worst days I’ve ever had when I had a letter from him which changed my whole life.
He told me that he would always love me and look after me, but went on to say that, as I knew only too well, it was not in his nature to be without the company of a woman and, as I had made it quite clear that I was not coming back, he was going to wed his cousin Mary Bell – who I had met and got on well with. He hoped I would understand and that I would feel able to go to the wedding – for which he would send me some extra money.
Well of course I understood how he felt – I felt the same, for it is not in the nature of a person not to have some loving – but all the same it was a black day for me. I cried on and off for most of it, and at one point I made up my mind to go back to him if he would have me – but then I knew it could not be. One thing I was sure of though, and that was that I would not go to the wedding – for that I could not have borne – and in any case it would not have been fair to Mary. In the end I wrote to him saying that I did understand how he was placed, and giving him and his wife-to-be my best wishes. Then I said that I hoped that he would understand why I did not feel able to go to the wedding and I asked him to make up some excuse for me.
On the day he was to be married I went to Haworth Church and thought about what was happening at that time in Ireland, and what Madam, whose body lay not far from where I sat, was thinking about it all. I went over all that had taken place since I had first known him, and I think it was then that the notion first came to me to write it all down – though I have not done so until now.
After that time nothing was ever the same for me, and I think that it had a lot to do with the illness that befell me at the end of 1864.
To this day I do not know what was up with me, but I was very poorly indeed and not able to do any work at all. Dr Ingham was not much help. He was very kind, and kept dosing me with this and that, but I could see that he did not know what ailed me and I was getting no better. That bothered me greatly because, the illness to one side, I was doing no work – just lying in my bed and being looked after.
In the end I told him that I thought it would be better if I went home to my Mother and my Uncle, so as not to be a burden to him and the other servants, and that perhaps the change might help.
I must say that that seemed to take a load off his mind and certainly he agreed right away. He saw to it that Mother was told and that I was taken to Sexton House in a carriage – wrapped up so warmly that I could barely breathe.
Of course, I was bothered about losing my job were I to be away for too long, but he put my mind at ease by saying that he would get by until I was better.
He kept coming to see me, but I took none of the medicines that he left. Instead I had Mother’s broths and cooking, and with her nursing I slowly began to feel better and was able to go back to the Manor House in the February.
I had kept writing to Mr Nicholls all that time – much to Mother’s annoyance as, in her mind, he had led me astray and then rid himself of me – and so he knew all that was going on and was very pleased that I had been able to go back to work.
Later in the year, though, Mother became ill and no matter what Dr Ingham or anybody else did for her she seemed to get no better. I was very worried about her, because there was not really anybody in the house who could nurse her all the time, and in the end I just had to ask the Doctor if he would let me go home and look after her.
Once again he was very good. He said that he too was very worried about her, and that he thought she should have someone by her.
Well, sad to tell, nothing that I or anyone else could do was enough to save her and she died in 1866. Of course, her death upset me greatly, especially as I kept thinking that perhaps she had caught what ailed her from me, but I must say that Mr Nicholls was very kind. He sent me the money to go over to Banagher and I stayed with him and his wife in Hill House.
I had thought that it would be a very uneasy stay – with what had passed between Mr Nicholls and me, and with Mary no doubt having her own thoughts about it – but we all got on very comfortably together and it was to be the first of many such visits.
I kept on at the Manor House, but all the while I was plagued by illness – which Mr Nicholls put down to Haworth being so cold and damp. Although I was barely 40 I felt worn out at times and nowhere near my usual self, and in the end I just had to give up working.
As always, Mr Nicholls was kindness itself at that time. He made sure that I had enough money, and had me over to Ireland whenever I felt like going. Once he even wrote asking me to go to live at Hill House, not as a servant but as my home, but I did not feel that I could do that. Instead I stayed in turn with members of my family – mostly my sisters.
The time came, though, when I felt that I could not carry on putting on others and that I really needed somewhere to live of my own. I said as much to Mr Nicholls and he was quick to agree. He said that I should find a place to rent that I liked and he would see to everything else.
Well, I looked and looked around Haworth and in the end I set my heart on this little cottage in Stubbing Lane and I moved in here in 1877. I do not think that Mr Nicholls thought much of my choice, nor was he very happy about me living alone, but it suited me and I have been very happy here. One thing I know made him laugh – on a whimsy I named it ‘Bell Cottage’ and the name makes me smile many a time. Many of the villagers cannot fathom the name. I am often asked about it, but I just smile. For those who have worked it out it just adds to their notion that I am no better than I should be anyway, and they know what they can do and all!
There is little left to tell. Mr Nicholls still writes to me, and I to him, and he makes sure that I have enough money to live comfortably, with no need to work. Not only that, every year he invites me over to Ireland and sends me the money when I decide to go. I enjoy my visits, although I do not go every year. Mary and me get on very well, and now me and her are like sisters. I still love Mr Nicholls in my own quiet way, but we are both content with the way things have turned out, and it pleases me to see how he has got on. He has bought another farm since I left and seems to be on the way to becoming rich, not only from them but from what he tells me has come his way from the writings of the Brontës and other bits and pieces. I do not begrudge him that for one moment for, as I have said, he looks after me well enough.
For my part, I quite enjoy my little life, and I even have a gentleman friend in Keighley who I see from time to time, though I shall never feel for him as I do for Mr Nicholls. Sometimes he talks about us getting wed, but I have made it plain that I shall never do so. Mr Nicholls has spoiled me for other men, and in any case I am too set in my ways now to live with somebody else.
Still, enough of all that, which has naught to do with what I set out upon. I have told the real story of how the Brontës lived and died, and in doing so I have eased the burden which has lain upon my mind these many years – although I shall never be proud of the part that I played, and I often pray for forgiveness.
As I have said to Mr Coutts, I do not want to harm Mr Nicholls in any way, shape or form, and so I do not want what I have set down to be made known until we are both dead and have gone to make our peace with God, if such be possible. Then Mr Coutt
s can make such use of it as pleases him or those who come after him.
[Signed] Martha Brown
I swear on my Oath that what I have set down here is the whole truth, and I give full Authority to Mr James Coutts, of Messrs Coutts and Heppelthwaite, Solicitors, of Palmer’s Buildings, Conduit Street, Keighley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and his Heirs, being members of the said Firm, to use both what I have written and that said to have been written by Miss Anne Brontë in any way that he or they may see fit, but only after my Death and that of Mr Arthur Bell Nicholls, of Hill House, Banagher, King’s County, Ireland.
Signed this Eighth day of January in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy-eight.
Martha Brown
Signed by Martha Brown, in our presence who in her presence, and we in the presence of each other (all being present at the same time) have hereto subscribed our names as Witnesses.
James Coutts
Solicitor,
Mere House,
Midhope Street,
Keighley,
West Yorkshire
Edmund Beasley
Solicitor’s Clerk,
21, Cottage Lane,
Keighley,
West Yorkshire
[] Nicholls’ arrival with yet another English woman must have caused quite a stir in Ireland, and though Nicholls was nothing if not plausible, and had a good tale ready, there would have been many who wondered why he had brought a ‘housekeeper’ all the way from England. One thing that pleased him greatly, however, was that, at long last, he had been able to give up the cloth, which was something he had wanted to do for years. Now that he had enough money to go into business that is exactly what he did. As Martha has told us, he bought a farm and moved into Hill House with her. There, once the dust had settled, he was able to give his full attention to the problem which he thought she might pose.
I suppose that, initially, he must have given thought to murdering her also, but if he did he would soon have realized that it just would not have been a feasible plan. Killing off a healthy servant girl was an entirely different kettle of fish from disposing of sickly Brontës, and anyway he still felt a strong affection for her. Little by little, therefore, he was forced to the conclusion that whatever happened would need to be by mutual consent. A happy Martha would be a safe Martha – but he could not decide what, precisely, should be done.
In the event he found that no problem existed. Martha had faced the reality that Nicholls would not marry her voluntarily – despite anything which he may have said – and she had no wish to force him and thus risk the fate which had befallen Charlotte. In any case she was desperately unhappy and homesick in what was to her a totally alien environment, and longed to be back with her own kind. As she says, within a relatively short time, she and Nicholls came to an amicable agreement about money and she summoned up the courage to return to Haworth and her family.
For Nicholls it was the ideal solution. He was delighted, and once she was safely out of the way he wasted no time at all in fulfilling another of his long-held ambitions. He courted and married Mary Bell, one of those ‘strikingly pretty’ cousins of his upon whom Charlotte had remarked during their honeymoon.
For the rest of his life Nicholls lived in quiet obscurity, and continued to have a horror of publicity. The only times he broke his silence was to write a few letters to England about his first wife.
However, readers will not be surprised to have learned from Martha that he did keep up a correspondence with her. Nor will they have been totally unprepared for the news that she visited Nicholls and his wife regularly, and for quite long periods, although we are not told how Mary felt about that!
I am surprised that nobody else appears to have commented upon this incongruity. Nicholls did not write regularly to anyone else, why then to a former servant? He did not receive regular visits from anyone else, why then from Martha – and who financed her trips? They, of course, knew the answers to those questions and now, thanks to Martha, so do we.
As one would expect, Ellen Nussey was one with whom he did sever all ties, but that did not bother her, especially as she also now had money on her mind. In the years after Charlotte’s death, she ran hither and thither trying to capitalize upon her friendship with her erstwhile friend, and upon the letters which she had received from her.
She asked George Smith if he would publish Charlotte’s letters but was told: ‘The right to print those letters (otherwise the copyright in those letters) belongs to Mr Nicholls, not to you. The letters themselves are your property and Mr Nicholls cannot claim them from you, but you cannot print them without his permission.’ He went on to say that he did not think that such permission would be easy to obtain!
A month later Ellen wrote again: ‘I have some letters which most people in his (Mr Nicholls’) place, would give almost a fortune to possess.’ She continued: ‘If you think it right you can give him a hint that he has not all the power on his side . . .’ However, George Smith was not in the blackmailing business and he would have none of it. In any case, he had done enough running around after Charlotte, and he was not going to make the same mistake with her friend. That apart, he had no wish to antagonize Nicholls as the latter possessed most of the Brontë papers, including manuscripts and letters, and if there was money to be made from them George Smith wanted to be the one making it.
At what, though, was Ellen hinting? Just what did ‘some letters’ contain which was, apparently, so dangerous that it made her think that Nicholls would be prepared to pay ‘almost a fortune’ to suppress them? It would have been most interesting to see how Nicholls would have reacted had Ellen’s remarks been put to him, but Smith would not write and Ellen did not. Referring to Nicholls, she told Smith: ‘His notes to me became less and less civil in time till the time of Mr B’s death when I ceased to write at all.’
Nicholls, of course, was blissfully unaware of all of this and carried on with his life as a farmer and country gentleman. Meanwhile, the manuscripts, books, letters and other documents which he had taken with him from the Parsonage lay undisturbed in cupboards in Hill House for over thirty years.
Upon the walls of the house were drawings by the three sisters, and the idealized portrait of Charlotte by George Richmond. However, what Nicholls treasured most was the famous profile portrait of Emily, which Branwell had painted when she was seventeen. Originally it had been part of a group painting of the three sisters, but Nicholls had mutilated the canvas, cutting out Charlotte and Anne. That action alone, I feel, speaks volumes for where his true feelings had lain.
Martha Brown died at Haworth on 19 January 1880. She was fifty-two, and was buried in Haworth churchyard, near Tabitha Aykroyd.
What may be considered surprising to some, who do not know her story and regard her simply as a former servant, is that she left a Will. It is dated 13 April 1875, and was written on one of her visits to Nicholls’ home at Hill House, and witnessed by him and his wife. In it she left the sum of £20 to her niece Ellen Binns, of Saltaire, Yorkshire, and bequeathed the residue of her estate to be divided equally between her five sisters – Ann, Eliza, Tabitha, Mary and Hannah – or their progeny. Her executors were her brothers-in-law Benjamin Binns, of Saltaire, and Robert Ratcliffe, of Haworth. Probate was granted, in London, on 5 February 1880, only seventeen days after she died.
In the period following her return from Ireland, Martha sold a few of the hundreds of articles which she had acquired, one way and another, from the Parsonage over the years. However, the bulk of the inscribed copies of Brontë novels, paintings, drawings, letters and clothes went to her sisters, who often sold items to collectors.
With Martha’s death Nicholls’ last link with the Parsonage was severed, and after he received news of the death of his former lover he no doubt sat on many a night reliving the events since 1845. I can picture him smiling as he remembered all that had happened. He had experienced some tight scrapes, and there had been worrying times, but he had enjoy
ed himself along the way. All in all, he had had a good life.
Arthur Bell Nicholls lived until he was nearly eighty-eight years of age, and died peacefully on 3 December 1906.
The Brontë saga had ended.
Epilogue
‘And it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.’
Revelation 10:10
While considering, and writing, this book, I often wondered what poison – or poisons – Nicholls used.
In Branwell’s case, the assumption that it was laudanum came easily to mind, but what of the others?
Time and time again, I was struck by the similarities between the Brontë deaths and those in the ‘George Chapman’ case. For those unfamiliar with the case, let me state the bare facts.
Severin Klosowski, alias George Chapman – still regarded by many as having been ‘Jack the Ripper’ – was a London publican who, between 1897 and 1902, murdered three women by poisoning them.
The first was a Mrs Mary Isabella Spink. She was separated from her husband, and she and Chapman, as I shall call him from now on, lived together as man and wife. If one excepts the after-effects of her frequent drinking bouts, Mrs Spink had enjoyed good health all her life until Chapman obtained the lease of the Prince of Wales Tavern, in Bartholomew Square, off London’s City Road. After only a few months there her health broke down completely, and she began to suffer from abdominal pains and severe vomiting. A Dr Rogers was called in, but she became weaker and died on Christmas Day, 1897.