by Nick Holland
This section is contained within speech marks in the novel, yet there is no indication of who is saying it, and it has no place in the narrative around it. It is Anne giving us a report on herself at this time, perhaps using words that the Misses Robinson had said to her, and it is the greatest evidence of all that she is Miss Grey herself. She is the ‘queer creature’, again using the word that Charlotte had used to describe her when they received the wooden soldiers, and which she had undoubtedly used on many subsequent occasions.
She was rising in esteem among both her employers and pupils, and she had also made a friend among the staff in the shape of housemaid Anne Marshall. She had to face hardships, such as the frequent colds, long and irregular hours, and frustrations when people would not always do what she wanted or expected them to, yet these were inconveniences that she was very familiar with. On the face of it, Anne should have been very happy at this time, at last she was showing people that she could succeed as a governess, she could succeed on her own. Yet, she was far from happy. She sums up her situation succinctly in the diary paper we quoted from earlier: ‘I am a governess in the family of Mr. Robinson. I dislike the situation and wish to change it for another.’10
What was it that made her want to leave this situation so soon, despite having pledged to make a success of it, when she had endured much worse with the Ingham family at Blake Hall? It was summer, and she was a long way from Haworth, the place that she wanted to be at that time more than anywhere else. The days were long, the nights were lonely and her mind kept telling her that she was 40 miles away from something that was waiting for her. Someone who was waiting for her.
Notes
1. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.191
2. Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 29 December 2014
3. Brontë, Anne, Agnes Grey, p.42
4. Leeds Mercury, 15 February 1840
5. Hibbs, Helier, ‘Was there a Fire at Thorp Green Hall?’, Yorkshire Archeological Journal 79, p.334
6. Brontë, Anne, Agnes Grey, p.48
7. The Brontës, Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal, pp.488–9
8. The Brontës, Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal, pp.489–90
9. The Brontës, Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal, p.489
10. The Brontës, Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal, p.489
9
THE BELOVED AND LAMENTED
MR WEIGHTMAN
O! I am very weary
Though tears no longer flow;
My eyes are tired of weeping,
My heart is sick of woe.
My life is very lonely,
My days pass heavily;
I’m weary of repining,
Wilt thou not come to me?
Oh didst thou know my longings
For thee from day to day,
My hopes so often blighted,
Thou wouldst not thus delay.
‘Lines Written at Thorp Green’
As the 1830s turned into the 1840s, the teenage Anne Brontë had already experienced a lot in life. She had seen her mother and two eldest sisters die. She had been to boarding school, where she herself fell gravely ill and descended into a religion-born depression. She had recently been dismissed from a job that she’d hoped would show her family how self-sufficient she really could be, and as the decades changed over she hadn’t yet secured her new role with the Robinsons at Thorp Green.
Anne was quiet, downcast, serious and brooding, concerned chiefly with matters of religion and what was wrong and right in the world. This is the image that many people have of Anne to this day, and it was certainly an image she could project of herself even then. Yet, we must remember that she was also a 19-year-old woman, and one of a highly sentimental and susceptible nature. She loved walking the moors, stopping to pick a pretty primrose or bluebell as she thought about the imaginary land that she and Emily had created. It was a land full of intrigue and violence, yes, but it was also a land full of passion and longing. She adored reading the romance heavy novels of Walter Scott and would discuss the dashing heroes with her sisters when Aunt Branwell wasn’t around to tut and shake her head.
Anne had the same feelings growing within her as grow within teenagers today. She had a longing for romance: she wanted a love that she could experience for herself, not one that ended when the last page was turned over. When she raised her eyes upwards towards the looking glass she would see that, whatever Charlotte may say of her, she was passably pretty. She was bright and ambitious, and when the need arose she could even overcome her shyness. Why shouldn’t she find a romantic engagement in her life? There was no reason why not, she assured herself; all that she had to do was to find the right man who was deserving of her love. In August 1839 that man arrived in Haworth, although she wasn’t immediately to know it, in the fine shape of William Weightman.
Weightman was born in 1814 in Appleby, Westmorland, in what we now know as Cumbria. His father was a brewer and had elevated the family into a solidly middle-class situation. He enjoyed successful school days at Appleby Grammar School and was also later to enjoy academic success at Durham University, obtaining a Master of Arts degree in Classics and a licentiate in theology.
There has been a scarcity of records about Weightman’s academic career, and the Brontë biographer Edward Chitham has previously claimed that Weightman never earned a master’s degree at all, as this would have allowed him dispensation from his theology licentiate, meaning that he would have obtained it in one year rather than two.1 Some have taken this as an indication of his general untrustworthiness, but in this, as with many of the other charges laid against him, he can be defended.
One very useful book on this period is The Durham University Calendar of 1842. It takes a look not just at the university in 1842 but at the history and achievements of the years leading up to it. Durham University was a very new establishment when Weightman was in attendance. Until 1832, Oxford and Cambridge had hung determinedly on to their academic monopoly, but as the industrial revolution led to a population explosion in the north of England, and with it a new class of wealthy northern industrialists, calls were growing for a new university to serve the needs of the North.
In 1832 plans for a university in Durham were approved, and it opened its doors in October 1833. The driving forces behind it were the Bishop of Durham, William Van Mildert, and his Archdeacon Charles Thorp. Through their perseverance and passion for the project, it was granted a royal charter by King William IV in 1837. This finally broke the stronghold of Oxford and Cambridge, and England now had three universities that could confer degrees. The first Durham graduates were honoured a week later, on 8 June 1837.2
The Durham University Calendar not only relates the history of the institution but the early students who had passed through it. William Weightman is mentioned in the book three times, including details of him sitting for his licentiate in theology in 1839. Careful study of the newspapers of the time are even more revealing and can at last lay to rest the mystery of his master’s degree.
The Leeds Intelligencer newspaper took great pride in this new ‘university of the north’ and carried regular columns entitled ‘Durham University Intelligence’. One such intelligence report of 23 June 1838 is particularly interesting. It details the ‘Public Examinations, Easter Term, 1838’, under the invigilation of Reverend C.T. Whitley M.A. It then provides a ‘List of students who passed the examination for the degree of M.A.’ Alongside details of seven other students, is the name of ‘Weightman, William’. Below these eight new masters of the arts are the names of people who had passed the lesser degree of B.A.3
There can be no doubt, therefore, that William Weightman did gain an M.A. from Durham University and then extended his study further to take the licentiate in theology, a qualification that would be approaching a doctorate today. Now we can understand why Patrick Brontë, a keen classical scholar himself, praised Weightman as a classicist of the first order.
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By 1839 Patrick Brontë’s health was becoming less assured, his eyesight had been growing steadily worse and the growing demands for funerals, weddings and baptisms in Haworth, as well as his regular services, was putting him under considerable strain. In 1835 he had appointed an assistant curate called William Hodgson, but the two priests had never hit it off, and Hodgson left in 1837 to become vicar of Colne in Lancashire.
In the summer of 1839 he applied once more to the Bishop of Ripon for an assistant curate. Patrick did not have the funds to pay the assistant’s wages himself, but he received a small grant for this expenditure from the Church Pastoral Aid Society. The bishop was charged with finding a young curate at the start of his career, who would therefore not be expecting much remuneration, and who was healthy and full of vigour. His mind turned to a young man who had just completed his studies at the new university in Durham. Weightman, yes, he would do.
When William Weightman arrived in Haworth in August 1839 as new assistant curate to Patrick Brontë, he could not have imagined the tightrope he was walking. He was entering a parish where many of the locals resented the taxes they had to pay to the official church, and where others were not afraid of voicing their discontent in ministers who did not meet their expectations. He would be working for Patrick Brontë, a man who could be very hard to win over and who did not give praise and support lightly. Furthermore, he would have close connections to a parsonage which contained four young adults who were unused to strange faces and did not like people disturbing their usual daily routines. That Weightman made such an immediate and lasting success of his time in Haworth is perhaps the greatest testament to his true character of them all.
Anne would have heard about the new curate’s arrival in letters sent to her in Mirfield from Charlotte and Emily. She would have learned that he had fitted into life in Haworth, and the parsonage, very quickly, and these early reports are sure to have piqued her curiosity. Although she returned to Haworth in December 1839 downcast and dispirited, following her exit from the Ingham household, one consolidating thought, alongside the prospect of seeing her family again, was that of seeing this much talked about Mr Weightman for herself. She was not to be disappointed.
William Weightman was, by all accounts, a very handsome, intelligent man, and he could talk to anyone. Anne would have been amazed to see how well he had integrated with the Brontë family. After only five months there, he was already as much a feature of parsonage life as Tabby, Aunt Branwell or the sisters themselves. We can imagine him stepping forward to greet Anne upon her arrival back at the parsonage, with his self-confidence, dazzling smile and an extended hand. Her sisters would have been watching on playfully to see how she accepted it, and Anne would have taken it briefly, before casting her eyes down and willing herself not to blush. This very first touch of hands, this formality, could have ignited the initial spark in her heart. It was to become an all-consuming conflagration.
In the following days, Anne would see him more and more, observing him silently as she often liked to do, blending into the background but missing nothing that was going on. She would have been astounded at his dealings with three of the people who were closest to her.
Patrick could be very stubborn when he wanted to be, and rather eccentric and idiosyncratic in his ways. His assistant curates often found him difficult to work with, but William Weightman had no such problems. Patrick took an instant liking to his new assistant. He was a hard worker, keen to learn and keen to take on new responsibilities. In the evenings, Patrick would spend time in his study with Weightman, usually a place where he valued solitude, and discuss classical works of literature, as well as biblical interpretation. Patrick was delighted to find that his new assistant was cut from the same cloth as himself, rather than having Calvinist leanings. He was a good preacher too, possessing a natural charm and eloquence, so that the parishioners of Haworth soon gave him their unreserved approval.
Weightman’s arrival would also prove a blessing for Branwell. At last he had some male company of a similar age to himself, and they were to become firm friends. Together they would discuss the things that Branwell loved: war, art, poetry, girls. It is possible that he joined Branwell and his drinking companions such as John Brown in the Black Bull from time to time. However, Weightman never took this to the excesses that Branwell did, and that his own brother, Robert Weightman, was to do.
Perhaps his most surprising supporter of them all was Emily. By this time Emily could not usually bear to be in the company of strangers at all, and the only men she could spend any time with were her father and brother. Anne would have been amazed to see that Emily was relaxed and comfortable in Weightman’s company, she did not hide from him and did not remain silent when he talked. If even Emily had regard for him, then surely he was a man who needed to be watched. Anne soon found that the more she watched him, the more she liked to watch him.
It is obvious that William Weightman had his charms, both physical and intellectual, yet some modern portraits of him are far from flattering. He is seen as a flighty man who played with women’s hearts and then cast them aside, a man that could not really be trusted or relied upon.4 This seems highly unfair when we have the testimony of Anne Brontë, her father and the parishioners in his favour, and just one dissenting voice against him. It is the powerful voice of Charlotte Brontë that is used to judge him harshly and unfairly, yet we can defend him by examining her motives.
When Weightman arrived in Haworth he implied that he was engaged to a woman called Agnes Walton from his home town of Appleby. Although it seems that he may have made an overture in that direction a year later, this is unlikely to have been true at the time – so why did he say it? The answer is that he was trying to put his new master, Patrick Brontë, and his daughters at their ease. Whilst the Brontë sisters were hardly bound by the conventions of their times, it would still have been judged strange for them to have spent so much time alone with a single man. By creating an engagement, he could put their minds at rest and prevent local tongues from wagging and damaging their reputations.
It has been said that he could never have hoped to be engaged to Agnes Walton, as the Waltons were on a different social level to the Weightmans; yet, William’s father was a middle-class businessman, and by the time William arrived in Haworth, John Walton, the father of Agnes, had died. Would a newly qualified priest, with a glowing record at England’s new university, and the potential to make a successful career in the Church, really be an unfit match for a fatherless young woman? It is certainly possible that in the loosest sense Weightman had been courting Agnes, and so, to meet the social niceties of the time, he embellished this into the tale of an engagement.
Weightman, with his good looks and pleasing manner, was certainly a hit with many ladies he met, yet that doesn’t necessarily make him a philanderer. We hear that he had been wooing Caroline Dury, daughter of the Reverend Theodore Dury of Keighley, a friend of Patrick Brontë, as well as a young Keighley woman named Sarah Sugden.5 We also hear that he had been refusing to answer letters from a woman in far away Swansea, yet the source for all these accusations is Charlotte, and on this matter she is a far from disinterested witness.
Through Charlotte’s correspondence with Ellen Nussey at this time, we can witness her changing attitudes to the new assistant curate. Like most people who met him, she was instantly taken with his good looks. Charlotte could develop a crush on somebody very quickly, and she prized appearance above most other attributes. Day by day, she began to become more fixated upon Weightman.
By March 1840 she had developed a playful nickname for Weightman, ‘Miss Celia Amelia’, and praised him as an ‘intelligent and interesting young person’. This nickname implies that his delicate features gave him an almost feminine appearance, and whilst in these early references it is used good humouredly, it is later used as a weapon against him.
In September 1840 Charlotte writes that he is still as ‘handsome, cheery and good tempered as usual’
but already she accuses him of having a ‘whole, warm fickle soul’.6 By March 1841 her tone and opinion has changed completely. She talks of the Valentine’s Day card she has received from him, but unlike that of a year previously it, like he, is not appreciated:
I knew better how to treat it than I did those we received a year ago. I am up to the dodges and artifices of his Lordship’s character, he knows I know him … for all the tricks, wiles and insincerities of love the gentleman has not his match for 20 miles round. He would fain persuade every woman under 30 whom he sees that he is desperately in love with her. I have a great deal more to say but I have not a moment’s time to write it in.7
This is the image of Weightman that is readily believed, and yet they are the words of Charlotte in one of her warm tempers, and when she was quite possibly feeling bitter and as though she had been spurned. In this letter, she magnifies Weightman’s faults to create character flaws that in reality weren’t there, twisting his good deeds and kind character and imagining them to be built upon manipulation and artifice.
By February 1840, Weightman had been in Haworth for six months and was known, liked and respected by all the Brontë family. The sisters would let him into confidences that they would never tell anyone else, including the revelation that none of them had ever received a Valentine’s card. With a smile on his face, Weightman resolved to do something about this. He walked 10 miles to Bradford so that he could post four cards anonymously, one each for Anne, Charlotte and Emily, and another for Ellen Nussey, who was at that time on one of her extended visits to Haworth.