Charlotte Brontë

by Claire Harman

  From her sickbed, Charlotte wrote only a handful more letters. One, to Ellen, asked her to find out more about their mutual friend Mary Hewitt’s problematic pregnancy—“how long she was ill and in what way”—while to Amelia Taylor (the mother of baby Tim) she begged for any remedies she could recommend, “anything that will do good.” In each case, she gave touching accounts of her husband’s care of her, and her grateful love. “No kinder better husband than mine it seems to me can there be in the world,” she told Laetitia Wheelwright. “I do not want now for kind companionship in health and the tenderest nursing in sickness,” while in her letter to Ellen she called him “the best earthly comfort that ever woman had.” There could be no greater tribute to the flowering of her love for her “dear boy” Arthur.

  In the middle of this awful ordeal, and during a winter of unusually severe cold, Charlotte had to report to Ellen “Our poor old Tabby is dead and buried.” Much to her sorrow and agitation she was too ill to attend the funeral of their beloved old friend, although perhaps she could have watched from the bedroom window as Tabby was buried within sight of the house. Charlotte must have by this time feared for her own survival, for on the same day that Tabby died, 17 February 1855, she made her will:

  In case I die without issue I give and bequeath to my husband all my property to be his absolutely and entirely; but in case I leave issue I bequeath to my husband the interest of my property during his lifetime, and at his death I desire that the principal should go to my surviving Child, or Children, should there be more than one child, share and share alike.

  Thus she overturned the cautious provision made in her marriage settlement, which kept her assets out of Nicholls’s hands. It was a sign of trust in her husband, now that Charlotte felt secure in his willingness to care for her father in the event of Charlotte predeceasing them both.

  In the early weeks of March, with a slight improvement in the weather, Charlotte seemed to be improving slightly too. She took some beef tea, “spoonsful of wine & water—a mouthful of light pudding.” All in all, though, as Martha remarked, “a wren would have starved on what she ate.” In the last note she ever wrote, in the feeblest pencilled script, Charlotte characteristically asked after everyone else’s health, commiserated with everyone else’s troubles, expressed relief at Papa being well. She had not strength to do more. “I am reduced to greater weakness—the skeleton emaciation is the same &c. &c. &c. I cannot talk—even to my dear patient constant Arthur I can say but few words at once.” About a week before she died, there was a change: “a low wandering delirium came on,” in which the ravaged patient begged for food “and even for stimulants,” as Mrs. Gaskell was told. She came to briefly to the sound of prayers being said, and, seeing her husband’s stricken face, said, “Oh! I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy.”

  Patrick Brontë wrote to Ellen on Friday, 30 March, warning her that the doctors had given up hope of Charlotte’s recovery, “and we only to [sic] look forward to the solemn event, with prayer to God, that he will give us grace and Strength sufficient unto our day.” Ellen set off at once from Brookroyd when she received this, but got to Haworth too late: Charlotte had died in the early morning of 31 March, three weeks short of her thirty-ninth birthday. Martha Brown and her sister Tabitha were the only ones present at the death, Arthur Nicholls having gone to take a rest in an adjacent room. Tabitha at first thought the bereaved father was behaving in a strangely calm and controlled way, turning to leave the room with dry eyes and in silence, but came across him in his bedroom soon after, kneeling by his bed, “crying in agonized tones, ‘My poor Charlotte! My dear Charlotte!’ ” The local doctor, Amos Ingham, signed the death certificate. The cause he cited, “phthisis,” usually indicated the wasting caused by tuberculosis, but applied as accurately to the wasting that three months of dehydration and starvation had wreaked on Charlotte’s already feeble frame.

  Patrick Brontë did not come out of his study when Ellen Nussey arrived, but sent a message asking her to stay for the interment, which took place on 4 April, Sutcliffe Sowden taking the service only eight months after he had officiated at the Nichollses’ wedding. Ellen and Martha put flowers and evergreens in the coffin with their friend’s ravaged corpse, and undoubtedly dressed her with special care, perhaps in one of her London outfits. One of the townsfolk who thronged to the church for the funeral and to see Mrs. Nicholls laid in the vault with her mother, aunt, brother and three sisters noticed that a violet ribbon was trapped in the coffin lid.*9

  * * *

  *1 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s landmark novel, published in March 1852, was reputed to have sold more than a million copies in England that year, “nearly all of them pirated.” CB had read the book by September, when she recommended it to EN (LCB 3, 67 and 68 n2).

  *2 CB changed the name of her protagonist from Lucy Snowe to Lucy Frost and back again while writing Villette.

  *3 On show at the Brontë Parsonage Museum—a charming, and expensive-looking, object.

  *4 Mrs. Bell had been to finishing school in London, for a few weeks only.

  *5 Ruins of these buildings and the old coach house are still visible in the fields where Cuba House, now demolished, used to stand.

  *6 Ellen Nussey lived long into the age of photography and became very keen on having her picture taken. Lined up next to later images (see the photograph section for an example), it certainly looks like the same person: well-fed, healthy, genteel, complacent. The writing of “Within a year of C. B.’s death” makes clear that the subject is not “C. B.”: “C. B. in the year before her death” is how Ellen would have labelled the picture if that were the case. Both cartes de visite are in the Brontë Society’s possession (Seton-Gordon Collection SG 109 and 109a).

  The wishful identification of Charlotte Brontë as the subject seems to have arisen from the discovery in 1984 of a glass negative of the carte in the archives of the photographer Sir Emery Walker (see Susan R. Foister’s article “The Brontë Portraits,” BST 18:5 [1985] for the details of this discovery). It was labelled “from a carte-de-visite of Charlotte Brontë, taken within a year of her death,” following the suggestion of “Within a year of C. B.’s death” on the reverse of the image it duplicated. Walker had been commissioned to make the negative for the firm of Smith, Elder in 1918, long after anyone at the firm knew Charlotte Brontë personally and twenty-one years after Ellen Nussey’s death. Presumably the photograph was in Smith’s archive from his dealings with EN in the three decades during which she was trying to publish her Brontë material.

  *7 I am assuming that the surviving text—at Texas University—is a copy made and kept by EN, because of the later pencil notes on it in her hand.

  *8 I am indebted, as so often, to Margaret Smith’s footnotes and editorial matter for the information here about the letters. See LCB 3, 299 n3, and LCB 1, 43–52, for her detailed accounts of EN’s concealments.

  *9 This tiny detail, so small it seems likely to be true, has come down in the family of the composer Robin Walker, whose great-great-grandfather saw it. See Betty Emmaline Walker, The Green Lanes: A Westmorland Childhood (York, 1998), pp. 149–50.

  Coda

  Currer Bell is dead!” lamented the Daily News, in an obituary penned by Harriet Martineau; “a pang will be felt in the midst of the strongest interests of the day, through the length and breadth of the land.” Martineau was unequivocal about Currer Bell’s achievement: her works would, she was sure, “hold their place in the literature of our country.” Still, she forefronted the biographical facts that already dominated public opinion about the writer: the isolation, emotional and physical hardships of her upbringing and the loss of her family one by one. It was Charlotte Brontë, as much as Currer Bell, who was on her way to becoming “for ever known.”

  Elizabeth Gaskell had been abroad that winter and only heard the news from John Greenwood, the Haworth stationer. She wrote at once to Patrick Brontë, in stunned surprise, and he replied, “
My Daughter, is indeed, dead…The marriage that took place, seem’d to hold forth, long, and bright prospects of happiness, but in the inscrutable providence of God, all our hopes have ended in disappointment, and our joy, in mourning.” In their shared bereavement, Patrick Brontë had drawn much closer to Arthur Nicholls, who continued to care for and support the frail old man as a sacred duty to his late wife. When Patrick rewrote his will after Charlotte’s death, he left small bequests to his brother Hugh and to Martha Brown but all the rest of his estate went to Arthur Bell Nicholls, no longer the despised seducer but “my beloved and esteemed son-in-law.”

  Even while she was trying to take in the news of Charlotte’s death, Elizabeth Gaskell was asking John Greenwood for every detail he could remember about Miss Brontë, “EVERY particular,” already thinking that she might write some sort of memorial. By May she had mentioned such a possibility to George Smith, to whom she had applied for a copy of Richmond’s portrait, although she imagined having to wait until “no one is living whom such a publication would hurt.”

  Her surprise was great, then, when she had a letter from Patrick Brontë, in June 1855, suggesting that she write a biographical appreciation of Charlotte, “long or short…just as you may deem expedient & proper,” and she accepted right away. A number of crudely inaccurate pieces of journalism had appeared immediately after Charlotte’s death, which Patrick Brontë had been inclined to laugh off and Arthur Nicholls thought deserved no response at all. Ellen Nussey, however, had persuaded Patrick that similar “attacks” would continue unless they oversaw an official biography, setting out the facts of Charlotte’s life and defending her (and her sisters) against criticisms of coarseness. Ellen had suggested Mrs. Gaskell as being the ideal candidate; what none of them seems to have realised (as Juliet Barker has pointed out) is that the most offensive article, in Sharpe’s London Magazine, had drawn heavily on gossip generated by Janet Kay-Shuttleworth, which Elizabeth Gaskell herself had helped to spread.

  Gaskell went over to Haworth that July with Catherine Winkworth, to discuss the memorial and to meet Mr. Nicholls for the first time, something she had avoided doing during Charlotte’s lifetime. It was a difficult day: feeling the reality of Charlotte’s death and seeing her grave were hard enough, but she also had to try to convey to the two bereaved men what she hoped to do—write a full-length book, not an article or monograph, and concentrate not on the works but on “her wild sad life, and beautiful character that grew out of it.” When Nicholls brought down some of Charlotte’s letters, both he and Patrick Brontë wept sadly over them. Nicholls probably wished he had already destroyed the papers that were now about to be handed over to the biographer, as her quick eye appreciated: “his feeling was against it’s [sic] being written, but he yielded to Mr. Brontë’s impetuous wish.”

  Gaskell set about her task with energy and deep interest. Ellen Nussey’s horde of almost 600 letters was the most fascinating resource, thrilling the biographer with their narrative power and revelations of character, wit and pathos. Gaskell’s daughters were set to copying large swathes of the material, as their mother kept up copious correspondences with Charlotte’s friends and associates and travelled to many of the places connected with her subject, including Cowan Bridge, Roe Head, Oakwell Hall, even the Chapter Coffee House. By the spring of 1856 only one major source remained unexplored—the Heger family.

  Gaskell travelled to Brussels in the spring of 1856 to find that the Hegers did indeed know all about Currer Bell’s fame, and identity. Madame Heger, who had read a pirated French translation of Villette, refused to see the biographer; Monsieur was, however, the soul of politeness, showed Gaskell some of Charlotte and Emily’s devoirs, explained his teaching methods, described their school careers—and showed or read her some of Charlotte’s letters. Towards the end of their interview, he asked if she could find out from the family what had happened to his replies to Charlotte. “[H]e is sure she would keep them,” Mrs. Gaskell told Ellen, “as they contained advice about her character, studies, mode of life.” What else they contained we shall never know, but Heger’s concern at knowing their whereabouts at this sensitive juncture is very interesting—it may even have been the only reason he agreed to meet Gaskell at all. Presumably, Mrs. Gaskell returned a negative answer from Mr. Nicholls, for nothing more was said about Heger’s letters, and she had already intuited enough about the story to decide to hide it from her readers. In the rue d’Isabelle, both Monsieur and Madame must have breathed a sigh of relief.

  —

  PATRICK BRONTË DIED in June 1861, at the age of eighty-four. He had lived to see his family made famous by the publication of Elizabeth Gaskell’s bestselling Life of Charlotte Brontë in 1857, and in the last years of his life would often be waylaid on the short walk from the Parsonage to the door of the church by people who wanted to shake the hand of “the father of the Brontës.” The church was packed for his funeral, where Arthur Bell Nicholls, the chief mourner, was so deeply affected that he had to be supported by his friends.

  Nicholls had expected to be appointed perpetual curate in his father-in-law’s place, but the church trustees did not elect him and, with short notice, he found himself required to move out of the Parsonage and the town. In some upset and confusion, he returned to Banagher to live with his remaining family there, gave up his ministry and turned to farming. In 1863 he married his cousin Mary Anna Bell (the charming girl whom Charlotte had met on honeymoon), his junior by eleven years. They had no children and led a very quiet life together in a house at the top of the hill above the town filled with relics from Haworth: the Richmond portrait hung in the sitting room, Brontë first editions lined the bookshelves, Brontë watercolours and sketches covered the walls, and a glass case contained some choice items of memorabilia. A substantial link with the old days was kept through Nicholls’s retention of Martha Brown as an employee: like Reverend Brontë, she had become devoted to Nicholls over time and was remembered in Banagher for her quaint Yorkshire accent and excellent sponge cake.

  Only a few weeks after Nicholls’s departure for Ireland, and the accompanying sale of effects from the Parsonage, a young American friend of Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Hale, made the pilgrimage to Haworth to see for himself the sites so memorably described in his friend’s biography. Making his way up Haworth’s Main Street, he met locals who already had Brontë anecdotes in place for tourists, and in the Black Bull was served his supper on a tray that, the publican’s wife assured him, had previously belonged to Charlotte. Hale got into conversation with a young man who was surrounded by tracings, plans and saucers of india ink, busy transferring his day’s observations on to an immense sheet of paper. He was a surveyor for the railway company planning to open a branch line from Keighley to Haworth, “so that future worshippers will find their pilgrimage easier.”

  Hale’s visit came at a strange turning point in the Brontës’ fame and the village’s life. On the one hand, a new broom was in operation: Reverend Brontë was dead, Mr. Nicholls was gone, and the new incumbent, John Wade, was busy having the Parsonage thoroughly refitted, in ways that would have made it almost unrecognisable to the former family.*1 He was also about to knock down and rebuild the church. On the other hand, there was a growing sense of the value of what was being swept away. Locals who had picked up items at the house clearance, like the tray in service at the Black Bull, found, when Hale and his like turned up, that they were in possession of precious relics. Disappointed that he had so nearly missed the sale of effects at which he could have acquired books, pictures and intimate possessions of the Brontës, Hale had to content himself with soaking up as much of the atmosphere as he could, interviewing and photographing locals who remembered the family, and coming away from the Parsonage with some substantial items from the builders’ rubbish pile, Mr. Brontë’s old bell-pull and half a sash window from Charlotte’s room.*2

  Ellen Nussey was well aware of the value of her letters from Charlotte, and, as the years went by and the fame o
f the Brontës grew, hoped to profit from them both financially and by association. Once Patrick Brontë was dead, she wrote to Constantin Heger, asking his “advice” about possible translation of her material into French, and whether he would collaborate with her on an edition. He didn’t rise to the threat of exposure implicit in her letter, but cautioned her not to do anything of which her friend would have disapproved, despite the undoubted interest of the subject, “even after Mrs. Gaskell’s detailed biography”:

  Could I, without the consent of my friend, publish his intimate letters—that is to say, his confidences? Has he not allowed me to see more of himself than he would wish to show to the first comer?…I make no unconscionable claim, Madam, to settle this question for you. I know that you have too much delicacy for me to be able to suppose that your reason and your heart have need of help in this.

  These considerations were easily overridden in Ellen’s mind by the need to tell “the truth” about Charlotte, and to have her own position as best friend to genius adequately recognised. In the 1870s she allowed Thomas Wemyss Reid extensive use of the letters for his biography of Charlotte, and in the next decade made an attempt to publish an edition in collaboration with the antiquarian Joseph Horsfall Turner, but fell out with him at a late stage in the production, causing all but a few copies of the book to be destroyed. The next person to court her for her Brontë manuscripts was the journalist Clement King Shorter, later editor of The Illustrated London News, who first visited Ellen in 1889 and won her trust. It was Shorter who warned her that copyright law would prevent her printing the letters she owned (news that increased her already very sour feelings towards Nicholls, whom she abused freely in her correspondence); this intelligence undoubtedly influenced her decision to sell a large number of the letters via Shorter to his associate T. J. Wise, ostensibly a highly reputable collector and antiquarian, but actually a shameless forger of literary manuscripts and high-class con-man. Wise promised to keep the Charlotte Brontë letters together as a collection, to be donated at some future date to the nation. In fact, he started selling them off piecemeal almost as soon as he got his hands on them, much to Ellen’s understandable horror.