Following these instructions for her funeral and burial place, Elizabeth then laid out her legacy, and it was one that changed literary history:
‘My Indian workbox I leave to my niece Charlotte Brontë; my workbox with a China top I leave to my niece Emily Jane Brontë, together with my ivory fan; my Japan dressing-box I leave to my nephew Patrick Branwell Brontë; to my niece Anne Brontë, I leave my watch with all that belongs to it; as also my eyeglass and its chains, my rings, silver-spoons, books, clothes, etc., etc., I leave to be divided between my above-named three nieces, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Jane Brontë, and Anne Brontë, according as their father shall think proper. And I will that all the money that shall remain, including twenty-five pounds sterling, being the part of the proceeds of the sale of my goods which belong to me in consequence of my having advanced to my sister Kingston the sum of twenty-five pounds in lieu of her share of the proceeds of the goods aforesaid, and deposited in the bank of Bolitho Sons and Co., Esqrs., of Chiandower, near Penzance, after the aforesaid sums and articles shall have been paid and deducted, shall be put into some safe bank or lent on good landed security, and there left to accumulate for the sole benefit of my four nieces, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Jane Brontë, Anne Brontë, and Elizabeth Jane Kingston; and this sum or sums, and whatever other property I may have, shall be equally divided between them when the youngest of them living shall have arrived at the age of twenty-one years8.’
By the time of Elizabeth’s death in 1842, all four named nieces had reached 21 years of age and so they received the considerable sum of £300 each, or around six times the annual wage that Anne Brontë was receiving from the Robinson family. This put an end to any immediate money concerns the cousins in Yorkshire and Cornwall had.
Branwell was left the Japan dressing-box but no money in his aunt’s will, but this shouldn’t be taken as a slight upon a nephew that she truly loved. At the time the will was written in 1833, Elizabeth had no doubt that Branwell would go on to forge a successful career and would therefore be in little need of her money. The fact that Elizabeth didn’t amend her will in the nine years after this indicates that she still had high hopes of him securing a stable future for himself.
In the midst of their grief there was now a lot for the Brontë sisters to discuss. It was eventually agreed that Emily would remain at Haworth parsonage to take over the running of the household, this being the period when Tabby was at her sister’s house, and the only servant living there at the time was 14-year-old Martha Brown. Anne would, reluctantly, return to her post as governess at Thorp Green Hall, and Charlotte insisted upon returning to Brussels where she had been given the option of serving as a teacher at the Pensionnat Heger while furthering her education. The dream of opening a school was still at the forefront of their minds, and they now had the funds to make it happen.
All seemed set for a positive resolution to this scheme, but things soon went wrong on all fronts, pushing the sisters into a very different future. Without Emily’s calming influence beside her, Charlotte let her emotional attachment to her married professor loose, and with this came a gradual loathing of his wife, and her employer, Madame Claire Heger. Things could not continue as they were, and Charlotte announced her decision in a letter to Emily:
‘Dear E.J., I have taken my determination. I hope to be at home the day after New Year’s Day… Low spirits have affected me much lately, but I hope all will be well when I get home… I am not ill in body. It is only the mind which is a trifle shaken – for want of comfort. I will try to cheer up now9.’
As 1844 dawned, Charlotte was back in Haworth, dejected and heartbroken. Emily was there to comfort her in her usual thoughtful, if quiet way, but Branwell had now joined his sister Anne at Thorp Green Hall. Anne, mindful of his struggles to find work and always willing to give those she loved another chance, had persuaded the Robinsons to employ her brother as tutor to their son Edmund Robinson junior. Greatly impressed with Anne, and hoping that her brother would be cut from the same cloth, the Robinsons agreed to this proposal, but it was a terrible mistake all round. Branwell soon fell in love with the middle-aged mistress of the house, Lydia Robinson, and embarked upon an affair with her, although the extent to which this affair was carried out will remain a mystery. Anne, ashamed that she had unwittingly facilitated this unholy relationship, resigned her post in June 1845, after more than five years of exemplary service, and returned to Haworth in low spirits. A month later Branwell was back too, dismissed by the choleric Edmund Robinson, who perchance had discovered the secret without Anne there to temper her brother’s excesses.
Suddenly, all four Brontë children were once again in the parsonage and without paid employment, and it was time once more to turn to the plan of opening their own school. Cards were printed for the ‘Misses Brontë Establishment for the Board and Education of a Limited Number of Young Ladies’ and a curriculum put together that included lessons in needlework, writing, arithmetic, history, grammar, and geography as well as optional lessons in languages, music and drawing. The advertised cost of £35 per year was, however, prohibitively expensive for a not-yet established school, especially one in a village as remote and unhealthy as Haworth. Their efforts and dreams that had first been supported by their Aunt Branwell four years earlier had come to nothing; not one pupil could be secured for their proposed school.
The sisters’ revised plans had been to modify the parsonage building and hold lessons there, but they must have known that this too brought an insurmountable problem in the form of their brother Branwell. Without the controlling influence of his aunt his addictions to drink and opium had strengthened, and his mood swings, by turn raging and self-pitying, made the parsonage no place to teach young ladies.
This was a moment of crisis for the Brontës. Although Elizabeth’s legacy would sustain them financially for a number of years there seemed little chance of them turning their talents to account, as Charlotte had put it in her letter to her aunt. A sudden discovery, chance or otherwise, changed everything:
‘One day, in the autumn of 1845, I [Charlotte Brontë] accidentally lighted on a manuscript volume of verse in my sister Emily’s handwriting. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me, - a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, not at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they also had a peculiar music - wild, melancholy, and elevating11.’
Charlotte knew that her sisters were both prolific poets, and they often read her their poems set in Gondal, that invented land of adventure, romance and deceit. What Charlotte now had in her hands was something very different; this was Emily’s hidden poetry book, containing deep, visionary and often dark poems about faith, nature, death and the art of creation. They were a key to Emily’s soul, and she was furious when she learned Charlotte had found them. After days of silent, and not so silent, recriminations, Anne managed to persuade Emily of the opportunity the discovery had brought. This was a chance, perhaps their final chance, to do something with their lives and with the talents they all possessed. Calmed and convinced by the words of the sister she loved more than anything in the world, Emily finally agreed to their plan; they would put together a collection of poems, each sister having broadly equal representation, and send it out into the world to find a publisher.
Although grudgingly agreeing to this scheme, Emily insisted upon taking the precaution of adopting pen names; having her most heartfelt poems read and judged by her sisters was bad enough, she could not bear the thought of them being placed before strangers. The adoption of pen names also served another purpose, as Charlotte explained in the post-mortem biographical notice of her sisters:
‘We did not like to declare ourselves women, because we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice12.’
The names selected by the sisters are revealing. Whilst keepi
ng their own initials, Charlotte became Currer Bell, probably inspired by Frances Richardson-Currer, the woman who had provided financial help to her father in his hour of need, and whom Charlotte may have met during her brief spell as a governess at Stone Gappe, a neighbouring property to Eshton Hall. Emily became Ellis Bell, with Ellis presumably a shortened tribute to the two Elizabeths she had loved and lost, her tragic sister and her Cornish aunt. Anne chose Acton Bell, and the inspiration for this may be the castle her aunt had told her about during many childhood stories, the castle just outside Penzance that was clearly visible from the Branwell house on Chapel Street, Acton Castle. It is often conjectured that the surname Bell was inspired by the sound of bells from their father’s church; this may be so, but it could also be a contraction of the family name B(ranw)ell.
The collection of sixty-one poems was entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell and it was sent with diminishing hope to a selection of publishers. It seemed as if no-one was interested in this collection of verse by unknown brothers, until they received a letter from poetry specialists Aylott & Jones of Paternoster Row, London. They agreed that the work showed promise, but insisted on an up-front payment of thirty five pounds, eighteen shillings and three pence to publish it13.
It was a large sum that four years earlier would have been simply beyond their reach, but they now had the money left them by their aunt to call upon. The discussion now was whether this was a sensible way to invest part of their legacy, and whether such a speculative move would have been approved of by their aunt? The answer was clear. Elizabeth would have supported them whatever they chose to do, and would have had confidence in the success of their venture. The money was sent and in May 1846, the first book by the Brontë sisters was published. Made possible by their Aunt Branwell’s money, it would not, of course, be their last venture into print.
Chapter 15
Last Days
‘Rachel admitted me into the parlour, and went to call her mistress, for she was not there: but there was her desk left open on the little round table beside the high backed chair, with a book laid upon it. Her limited but choice collection of books was almost as familiar to me as my own; but this volume I had not seen before. I took it up. It was Sir Humphry Davy’s “Last Days of a Philosopher”, and on the first leaf was written “Frederick Lawrence.” I closed the book, but kept it in my hand, and stood facing the door, with my back to the fire-place, calmly waiting her arrival.’
Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Elizabeth’s legacy had provided the money that allowed the Brontë sisters, under their aliases of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, to finally see their work in print, and now, after paying a further £2 for advertising costs1, they waited with mixed feelings to see how their collection of poetry would be received.
Initial omens looked promising, as the book received relatively positive reviews from both The Critic and the Athenaeum, who referred to the ‘brothers’, as they supposed them to be, as ‘a family in whom appears to run the instinct of song2’. They even received a request for autographs, forwarded by their publisher. Unfortunately, this fan of their work, a Mr. Frederick Enoch of Warwick3, was initially one of only two people to purchase this collection.
It could be expected that Charlotte, Emily and Anne would be despondent at this complete and utter failure of their poetry, but a famous letter sent from Charlotte to a number of famous writers at the time (including Thomas de Quincey and Alfred Tennyson) suggests otherwise:
‘My relatives, Ellis and Acton Bell and myself, heedless of the repeated warnings of various respectable publishers, have committed the rash act of publishing a volume of poems. The consequences predicted have, of course, overtaken us; our book is found to be a drug; no man needs it or heeds it; in the space of a year our publisher has disposed of but two copies, and by what painful efforts he succeeded in disposing of those two, himself only knows. Before transferring the edition to the trunkmakers, we have decided on distributing as presents a few copies of what we cannot sell4.’
This letter has a jocular tone, for whilst the Brontës had failed to enjoy the success they had hoped for with Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, they had rediscovered their childhood love of writing together, and it is this that galvanised them into embarking upon another scheme of writing.
Poetry was a shared love of the Brontës, but they now realised that if they were to make any money out of writing they would have to turn to prose. The halcyon days of poetry, with the likes of Byron and Scott selling vast quantities of their work, were over; even sales of the great Wordsworth were down. Novels, on the other hand, were beginning to enjoy a boom, thanks to their increasing affordability and the popularity of circulating libraries. It should be noted, however, that despite Charlotte’s light-hearted prediction, the sisters’ poetry was not pulped and recycled into trunk lining; the publishing house Smith, Elder & Co later bought the unsold stock from Aylott & Jones and sold every last copy, after which they sent Charlotte royalties of twenty-four pounds and six pence5.
A succinct summary of what happened next was given by Charlotte in her short biography of her sisters:
‘Ill-success failed to crush us: the mere effort to succeed had given a wonderful zest to existence; it must be pursued. We each set to work on a prose tale: Ellis Bell produced Wuthering Heights, Acton Bell Agnes Grey, and Currer Bell also wrote a manuscript in one volume. These MSS. were perseveringly obtruded upon various publishers for the space of a year and a half; usually, their fate was an ignominious and abrupt dismissal. At last Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were accepted on terms somewhat impoverishing to the two authors6.’
The sisters had originally suggested to publishers that their offerings could be published together as a three volume set, at the time the most popular way to publish a book. Unfortunately, Charlotte’s contribution, The Professor, was not up to the standard of her future endeavours and was only published posthumously. It had been agreed before sending their manuscripts on their long journeys that, this time, they would not pay to have them published as they had with their poetry, but as Charlotte hints above the actuality was somewhat different.
Thomas Cautley Newby wrote to Emily and Anne, or Ellis and Acton as he knew them, in July 1847, offering to publish their novels if they paid him an initial fee of £50. This fee would be repaid once Newby had made that figure through their sales. Even under this deal he had no interest in publishing The Professor, which may have jaundiced Charlotte somewhat as she was bitterly opposed to her sisters paying the sum. Pay him they did, however, thanks to the reserves of money they had from Elizabeth’s will, and without which the wild brilliance of Wuthering Heights and the gentle beauty of Agnes Grey would still be unknown.
Elizabeth’s influence on the Brontë’s novels is not only shown in the fact that they exist at all, but is also apparent within their content, for she can be seen in every one of them. In Wuthering Heights, for example, we hear echoes of Aunt Branwell’s stories of Penzance, from tales of ghosts walking at night to a grieving man scraping away the earth from the coffin of his beloved.
Charlotte did not let the failure of The Professor deter her and encouraged by the response from one publisher, the aforementioned Smith, Elder & Co., she quickly finished and then submitted her second novel. It was Jane Eyre, and so enamoured of it were the publishers that it was available to the public in October 1847, two months before Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey reached the shelves.
Charlotte had spent less time with Elizabeth Branwell throughout her life than either Emily or Anne, and yet in Jane Eyre she does not fail to acknowledge the debt that she and her sisters owed to their aunt:
‘“Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about Mr Rochester; it is not in Mr Rochester he is interested. Meantime, you forget essential points in pursuing trifles: you do not enquire why Mr Briggs sought after you – what he wanted with you.”
‘“Well what did he want?”
This inheritance from an uncle provides Jane the opportunity to dream of something more than being a governess or teacher for the rest of her life, just as Aunt Branwell’s will had allowed Charlotte to pursue her own dream, now with spectacular success. Of course, Elizabeth’s gift of £300 was rather less than Uncle John Eyre’s £20,000, but it had been more than enough to free Charlotte from any immediate need to seek another demoralising job.
Elizabeth is most present, as is to be expected, in the work of the niece she was closest to, Anne. In Agnes Grey we see her both as Aunt Grey and as the mother figure who eventually opens a school with Agnes by the coast.
Anne’s second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, has the titular heroine, Helen, being raised by her uncle and aunt. It is Helen’s aunt that gives her advice on the perils and snares of love, just as Elizabeth surely did at some time with Anne:
‘“Remember Peter, Helen! Don’t boast, but watch. Keep a guard over your eyes and ears as the inlets of your heart, and over your lips as the outlet, lest they betray you in a moment of unwariness. Receive, coldly and dispassionately, every attention, till you have ascertained and duly considered the worth of the aspirant; and let your affections be consequent upon approbation alone7.”’
We have already seen how Helen’s decision to leave her abusive husband, Arthur, reflected the action taken by Anne’s Aunt Jane who left her husband John Kingston in America and returned to Cornwall with her youngest child. There is one other, subtle, tribute to Penzance, and by association to the aunt that she loved, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and it is contained at the head of this chapter. As a pivotal moment of the novel approaches, Gilbert Markham finds a book on Helen’s reading desk. Anne is careful to reveal the name of the book, although it has no further relevance to the plot; it is by Sir Humphry Davy, the Penzance native known, and often spoken about, by her aunt.
Aunt Branwell and the Brontë Legacy Page 15