Charlotte Brontë

by Claire Harman

  Charlotte was almost paralysed with fear, waking at night to the renewed knowledge that Emily was dead and Anne dying. “[L]ife has become very void, and hope has proved a strange traitor,” she wrote to Williams, “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.” “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.”

  Work seemed out of the question, though Charlotte knew that Smith, Elder were keen for her to continue with the novel she had started the year before, and that they had originally suggested she might publish as a serial, as Dickens and Thackeray had done so successfully and lucratively. Smith had even suggested that Charlotte might be able, like Thackeray, to do her own illustrations to Shirley—an idea that she quickly declined. She had told Williams about her old ambition to be an illustrator, but, looking back on her portfolio of drawings, she couldn’t imagine how she had ever thought such a thing possible.

  “Currer Bell” was in abeyance, but to placate her publishers Char lotte asked them to look at the first volume of Shirley and give their opinion on its progress. It was a rather extraordinary, and desperate, act of submission. She had finished and copied the first volume and was working on the second before Branwell’s death, but now had little hope of being able to take up the thread, and was plagued with doubts about its quality and novelty. Having just read Mary Barton, the first novel by a Unitarian minister’s wife from Manchester, Elizabeth Gaskell, she felt dismayed at the similarity of that book to what she had in mind herself. When Williams wrote back, with the opinions of himself, George Smith and their colleague James Taylor on the beginning of Shirley, Charlotte was unwilling to do as they suggested—change the first chapter, with its boisterous comedy about the curates—because, like the Lowood scenes in Jane Eyre, Charlotte maintained “it is true”: the curates, she insisted (totally missing the point, but using a surprisingly new image), “are merely photographed from the life.”

  A second opinion from a London doctor recommended by Smith warned Charlotte and her father not to entertain “sanguine hopes” of Anne’s recovery, but that, if her current regime were kept to, her life could be prolonged a year or even two. “[T]here have been hours—days—weeks of inexpressible anguish to undergo—and the cloud of impending distress still lowers dark and sullen above us,” Charlotte wrote to Laetitia Wheelwright, her acquaintance from Brussels days who had lately become a closer friend and correspondent. At the end of March, Charlotte asked Ellen if she would be willing to accompany Anne to the seaside, which she felt was the only thing that might do her good—or at least please her. Anne herself was acutely aware that the beneficial effects of any change of scene would be lost if they left it too long, but, unbelievably, Patrick Brontë’s refusal to leave home himself made Charlotte feel “consequently obliged” to stay with him. Both father and daughter seem to have become blinded to their priorities at this point, and it was left to the invalid herself to suggest that Ellen Nussey might consider accompanying her in Charlotte’s stead. But weeks later they were still in Haworth, waiting for better weather, for a miraculous turnaround of the disease, for Patrick Brontë to agree to be left alone with the servants for a while. Mr. Nicholls had offered to come and stay with him at the Parsonage, but he would not hear of it. The sisters tried to get outside together every day, for however short a time, but “we creep rather than walk,” Charlotte told Ellen. By the middle of May, Anne could hardly climb the stairs however slowly, spent the day “in a semi-lethargic state” and was looking even thinner than Emily.

  The trip to Scarborough finally went ahead at the end of that month, too late to be more than a distressing last wish, as Tabby and Martha, watching Anne being lifted into the chaise, saw too plainly. The journey, broken for a night in York, was arduous and the semblance of a holiday seemed to Charlotte like a “dreary mockery.” “Oh—if it would please God to strengthen and revive Anne how happy we might be together! His will—however—must be done.” Anne was a model patient, the opposite of Emily: she bore the discomforts and anxieties of the journey with what Ellen emotionally termed “the pious courage and fortitude of a martyr” and, with heroic selflessness, tried to minimise the distress to her two companions. She was also doubtless trying to set an example to Charlotte, whose stricken face must have caused the dying girl deep pain.

  Their lodgings on the front included a bedroom and sitting room overlooking the sea in one of the best properties in the town, known to Anne from her holidays with the Robinsons. Money was available to do the thing properly, as Anne had received a legacy of £200 from her godmother Frances Outhwaite just a few months before. On the Saturday, they went on to the sands and Anne had a ride in a donkey carriage, taking the reins from the boy driver so that the donkey would not be driven too hard, and advising him how to treat the animal in future. It was the last active thing she ever did. The next evening she was wheeled to the window to watch a spectacular sunset lighting the castle and distant ships at sea, and the day after that she died.

  Ellen provided the details of Anne’s death to Elizabeth Gaskell, but added to them later in notes to her proposed edition of Charlotte’s letters, relating a ghastly scene of disagreement and confusion on the last morning, when Anne, proving too weak to get down the stairs to breakfast, agreed to let Ellen carry her down “baby fashion.” Charlotte was “nervously angry” at the proposal and her objections made Anne demur, but Ellen argued to the contrary, having got it into her head that this would be a good and useful thing to do. The scheme did not go well, however. Ellen staggered at the bottom of the stairs and had to drop the invalid into a nearby chair. One can well imagine Charlotte’s frantic reprimands, but Anne, whose head was lolling and arms stiffening, told Ellen not to worry: “I am not hurt, you know you did your best.”

  They called the doctor out later that morning, as Anne asked if it would be possible to get home in time if they set off immediately. She sensed she was dying, and the doctor confirmed it, earning this brave woman’s gratitude for his honesty. Anne’s last hours and actions were all exemplary, “deeply assured that a better existence lay before her—she believed—she hoped.” She prayed for blessings on her sister and friend, and tried to comfort them, saying, “Take courage, Charlotte; take courage,” an echo of their old rallying cry. She was tranquil, expectant even, and just before she died she told them she was very happy. The door to the room was half open and, as Charlotte closed her sister’s eyes, they heard the dinner bell ring: life went on in the lodging house. Unrestrained now, Charlotte gave herself over to grief, which “burst forth,” as Ellen described it, “in agonised strength.”

  To spare her father the agony of burying a fifth child, Charlotte waited until the following day to write home, hoping that his commitment to an annual church event would dissuade him from travelling to the funeral, which took place two days later. Miss Wooler attended, though; her friendship had proved more and more valuable in the years since Charlotte returned from Brussels, with Roe Head eruptions quite forgotten. Anne was buried in the hillside graveyard of the parish church, overlooking the sea, the only member of the Brontë family not to lie in Haworth.

  “Anne, from her childhood seemed preparing for an early death,” Charlotte told Williams, in a deeply personal and confiding letter written a few days later. If that is true, what a sad reflection on the tenor of the household, the lack of health, joy and optimism out of which Anne Brontë’s resignation grew. Charlotte tried to bear in mind the strength of Anne’s faith and take some comfort from it, but, though she told herself that God was “wise—perfect—merciful,” the gap between his will and her happiness s
eemed stretched beyond bearing: “Why life is so blank, brief and bitter I do not know—Why younger and far better than I are snatched from it with projects unfulfilled I cannot comprehend.” And Anne’s calmness in the face of death “but half consoles…there is piercing pain in it. Anne had had enough of life such as it was—in her twenty-eighth year she laid it down as a burden. I hardly know whether it is sadder to think of that than of Emily turning her dying eyes reluctantly from the pleasant sun.”

  At her father’s suggestion, Charlotte and Ellen did not come home immediately but left Scarborough and its tragic associations for Filey, then a quiet fishing-village seven miles to the south. The wild beauty and loneliness of the place was balm to Charlotte, who spent hours on the beach or at the window watching the sea, as the seagulls and cormorants skimmed the water between the shore and the ridge of black rocks that stretched outwards for half a mile. Her mind revolved on the difficulty of having to believe ever more strongly in something incredible, the mercy and wisdom of God. She wrote to Williams, “There must be Heaven or we must despair,”

  for life seems bitter, brief—blank. To me—these two [Emily and Anne] have left in their memories a noble legacy. Were I quite solitary in the world—bereft even of Papa—there is something in the past I can love intensely and honour deeply—and it is something which cannot change—which cannot decay—which immortality guarantees from corruption…

  A year ago—had a prophet warned me how I should stand in June 1849—how stripped and bereaved—had he foretold the autumn—the winter, the spring of sickness and suffering to be gone through—I should have thought—this can never be endured. It is over. Branwell—Emily—Anne are gone like dreams—gone as Maria and Elizabeth went twenty years ago. One by one I have watched them fall asleep on my arm—and closed their glazed eyes—I have seen them buried one by one—and—thus far—God has upheld me. from my heart I thank Him.

  When Charlotte returned to Haworth on Midsummer Day, to the sombre, affectionate embraces of her father, Tabby and Martha, there was little to say. But, heartbreakingly, Keeper and Flossy bounded around her “in strange ecstasy,” thinking that Emily and Anne must be coming home too. Keeper patrolled the little bedroom that Emily had latterly used, and Charlotte noticed that Flossy “may look wistfully round” for Anne: “they will never see them again—nor shall I—at least the human part of me.”

  I left Papa soon and went into the dining room—I shut the door—I tried to be glad that I was come home—I have always been glad before—except once—even then I was cheered. but this time joy was not to be the sensation. I felt that the house was all silent—the rooms were all empty—I remembered where the three were laid—in what narrow dark dwellings—never were they to reappear on earth. So the sense of desolation and bitterness took possession of me—the agony that was to be undergone—and was not to be avoided came on—I underwent it & passed a dreary evening and night and a mournful morrow—to-day I am better.

  I do not know how life will pass—but I certainly do feel confidence in Him who has upheld me hitherto. Solitude may be cheered and made endurable beyond what I can believe. The great trial is when evening closes and night approaches—At that hour we used to assemble in the dining-room—we used to talk—Now I sit by myself—necessarily I am silent.—I cannot help thinking of their last days—remembering their sufferings and what they said and did and how they looked in mortal affliction—perhaps all this will become less poignant in time. Let me thank you once more, dear Ellen, for your kindness to me which I do not mean to forget—How did they think you looking at home?—Papa thought me a little stronger—he said my eyes were not so sunken. I am glad to hear a good account of your Mother and a tolerable one of Mercy—I hope she will soon recover her health—Give my love to her and to all—Write again very soon and tell me how poor Miss Heald goes on—

  Yours sincerely

  C Brontë

  * * *

  *1 This statement implies that Charlotte saw her mother and her sister Elizabeth ill but not dying (somewhat contrary to what Sarah Garrs said about taking the children in to see Mrs. Brontë on the morning of her death). Charlotte was not at home for the death of her sister Maria.

  *2 Anne also kept an eye on Charlotte’s business matters, writing on her behalf to Williams on the day of the funeral (LCB 2, 121).

  *3 The outburst in Jane Eyre about contemporary poetry, completely unrelated to the action, seems to me a veiled reference to Emily’s unrecognised genius. Jane has been given a copy of Walter Scott’s Marmion, recently published (in 1808), prompting a lament by the narrator for that “golden age of modern literature.” “But, courage!” she continues. “I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty, and strength again one day” (Jane Eyre, 370).

  *4 There is a tradition that Emily died on the sofa in the dining room of the Parsonage, but, as Juliet Barker has pointed out, there are no contemporary sources for the story, first mentioned in A. M. F. Robinson’s 1883 biography of EJB, and it is much more likely that she died upstairs. Charlotte refers to Keeper lying “at the side of her dying-bed” (Barker, 576, and CB to WSW, 25 June 1849, LCB 2, 224).

  THIRTEEN

  Conquering the Big Babylon

  1849–51

  Charlotte had caught a cold at the coast that she couldn’t shake off, and that, with the accompaniment of pains between her shoulders, of course filled her with dread, though she strove to hide any signs of ill-health from her father; “his anxiety harasses me inexpressibly.” Looking back over the last year, with her siblings dying one after another in autumn, winter and spring, Charlotte could hardly have expected to survive them long. The infectious nature of consumption was not understood for another twenty years, with the development of germ theory, but the rapid decline of her more robust sister Emily, who had seemed to have “spirit…strong enough to bear her to fulness of years,” meant Charlotte felt the spectre of sudden decline and death hanging over her ever after.

  Ellen Nussey wanted to come and stay at Haworth, but Charlotte turned down the offer, on the harsh principle of needing to endure the worst as soon as possible. Williams too, her most generously sympathetic friend and the recipient of her most heartbreaking letters, was moved by Charlotte’s predicament to suggest she should have a companion come to live with her.*1 She declined this also, there being “two persons whom it would not suit”: primarily the young person condemned to share such a melancholy and uneventful existence, “a church and stony churchyard for her prospect—the dead silence of a village parsonage…a grave, silent spinster for her companion. I should not like to see youth thus immured.” The other person whom the arrangement would not suit was of course Patrick Brontë. There was no change there, after the disastrous winnowing of his family; no adjustment to his habits of retirement and solitary meals, and no better tolerance of intrusions. The older he got, the more entirely Charlotte considered his wishes, however much against her own interests they were. A young female companion coming to live at the Parsonage in 1849 might indeed have been a real comfort to her.

  Sitting in a house so silent that the tick of the clock on the landing was the only sign of life, Charlotte wrote to Williams that she knew work was the thing to sustain her: “Lonely as I am—how should I be if Providence had never given me courage to adopt a career—perseverance to plead through two long, weary years with publishers till they admitted me?”

  hereafter I look for no great earthly comfort except what congenial occupation can give—For society—long seclusion has in great measure unfitted me—I doubt whether I should enjoy it if I might have it. Sometimes I think I should, and I thirst for it—but at other times I doubt my capability of pleasing or deriving pleasure. The prisoner in solitary confinement—the toad in the block of marble—all in time shape themselves to their lot.

  In the long days alone Charlotte returned to the manuscript of �
�Hollow’s Mill,” which she had struggled to continue writing the previous year and abandoned when Anne was dying. But what had started life as a conscious attempt at a realistic “condition of England” novel, with strong dramatisations of social and religious questions and suppression of too much “romance” in the love stories, had been overtaken by events. Charlotte’s heart was no longer in it, except that there was a melancholy pleasure in making her dead sister Emily the model for the novel’s heroine, Shirley Keeldar, and perhaps putting herself (combined with aspects of Anne) into the character of Caroline Helstone.*2 Charlotte told Elizabeth Gaskell that Shirley Keeldar was an attempt to depict “what Emily Brontë would have been, had she been placed in health and prosperity”—a fantasy version of her sister, in other words. In August she wrote to Williams telling him that she was changing the name of the book to that of the character who had turned out to be “the most prominent and peculiar.”

  Rich, clever, carefree Shirley is a visionary, a philosopher, but passive and contemplative, for all her talk of wanting to do things in the world. She spends hours on the heath, lying in heather and staring at the sky, or at windows, looking out at stars; a poet in thought, but one who doesn’t write. Charlotte gave her such a self-contented and philosophical disposition that the character ran the risk of seeming incredible (however true a reflection of Emily Brontë’s inner calm it might have been): her prospective marriage to Louis Moore at the end of the story seems almost irrelevant to her happiness, as well as unlikely.