In Search of Anne Brontë

by Nick Holland

  Each card had a personalised verse inside it, and we can imagine the delight on the faces of the young women upon receiving them. It did not take them long, however, to work out who must have sent them, despite the misleading postmark, and they sent him a collective card in return. They too had composed a verse:

  We cannot write or talk like you;

  We’re plain folks every one;

  You’ve played a clever trick on us,

  We thank you for the fun.

  Believe us when we frankly say

  (Our words though blunt are true),

  At home, abroad, by night or day,

  We all wish well to you.8

  This demonstrates Weightman’s character. He sent the cards not to mock the sisters but to brighten up their day. There was no malice intended, he could not begin to imagine they could be taken in that way, yet a year later when he repeated this act that was exactly how Charlotte reacted.

  The card had served to increase Charlotte’s growing infatuation. She painted his portrait, and Ellen mocked her friend for how many sittings she made him endure so that she could gaze upon his features. From the surviving sketch we see a handsome and young looking face, with wavy hair and long mutton chop sideburns. Charlotte hoped that Weightman would return her affections, indeed it seems that due simply to his usual kindnesses and ebullient character, she believed that he did.

  Charlotte had by this time already rejected one proposal of marriage, from Ellen’s brother Henry, because she could not countenance being married to a man she did not find attractive, yet she might not have not rejected Weightman if the proposal came. It never did, and Charlotte’s love began to turn to anguish, then despair, and then anger.

  Charlotte sought around for the reason that he had remained strangely immune to her charms. Agnes Walton would seem the most obvious suspect, and yet Charlotte betrays no jealousy towards her. She goes even further and paints a picture of Agnes for Weightman, just as Jane Eyre paints a portrait of St John Rivers’ love in her famous novel. Could it be that an even worse betrayal had been carried out, that Weightman secretly harboured feelings for somebody that Charlotte, although she loved her, could never think of as an equal? It was a love that Charlotte could never quite bring herself to confront, preferring instead to think that Weightman was a faithless man who loved any and all women. As the months and years passed, she would look the other way: she could not accept that Weightman was turning his attention to her youngest sister, Anne.

  Anne and William would come to know each other well in those first months of 1840. She was now at home in the parsonage, and he was a frequent visitor. We know that Weightman was a deeply devout man, and Patrick described him as a man who ‘thought it better, and more scriptural, to make the love of God, rather than the fear of hell, the ruling motive for obedience’.9

  Those views were the same as those held most deeply by Anne. His ebullience masked his kindness and thoughtfulness, as shown by the regular gifts of game that he sent to the parsonage when he was away; Anne’s kindness and thoughtfulness were also hidden, but by quietness and reserve. They soon saw through each other’s masks and recognised kindred spirits. We also know that Anne was the same age as the Agnes Walton he had left behind and that people thought of her as the prettiest of the sisters, despite Charlotte forever thinking of her as being ‘queer looking’. There was no reason for Weightman not to develop feelings for her, and over time this seems to have happened.

  We know the titles of three of the verses in the 1840 Valentine’s cards that Weightman sent. They are ‘Fair Ellen, Fair Ellen’, ‘Soul Divine’, and ‘Away Fond Love’.10 We can say with certainty that the first was sent to Ellen Nussey of course, but could ‘Away Fond Love’ be for Anne, especially if she was at that point advertising for a new governess position, and had told him about her plans to move away?

  We don’t have to look very far for evidence of Anne’s growing emotional attachment to William Weightman. From the moment of meeting him, her love poems leave Gondal far behind and take on a new and more realistic feel, and of course there is the character of Reverend Weston in Agnes Grey.

  Edmund Weston is the assistant curate to the vain and self-centred Reverend Hatfield. He is a kind and spiritual man, much admired by the parishioners; gradually, he and Agnes fall in love. Their growing love is ruptured by a separation, but after a passage of time they meet again and embark upon a happy married life together.

  There are many similarities between Weston and Weightman, yet one major difference. Whilst Weightman possessed good looks, Weston is described as being plain, and he is also described by Miss Murray as being brutish and ugly. Why would Anne have done this, if Weston were indeed intended to be a portrait of Weightman?

  By downplaying his good looks, Anne was emphasising his spirituality and kindness, qualities that were infinitely more important to her. She would have been ashamed for people to think that she only loved a man because he was handsome, so she was careful through the depiction of Edmund Weston to allay this charge of superficiality for both herself and her heroine.

  It may also be asked why, if Anne loved Weightman and especially if she felt some reciprocation, she moved so far away? Again we must turn to Anne’s principles of patience and endurance. To Anne’s mind if something was worth having, it was worth waiting for. Put faith in God: if He willed it then it would happen. The proof of this belief is in both of Anne’s novels. In Agnes Grey, Agnes has a long and lonely wait, thinking she will never see Weston again, until they are suddenly reunited. In the final section of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Gabriel and Helen endure a string of delays, misunderstandings and unfortunate incidents that stretch for years until they can finally marry. These delays are tests of love that Gabriel must overcome to prove his worth.

  Anne would have turned to a favourite piece of scripture for sustenance and encouragement, St Paul’s powerful ‘hymn to love’ in his first letter to the Corinthians. We are told that love ‘suffereth long, and is kind’, that it ‘vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up’, and that love ‘beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things’.

  This then is Anne’s perfect love. It will be kept quiet, rather than being vaunted and puffed up, and it will bear and endure all things. Like Anne, it will be patient, and testing love by moving away, making it endure even more, could only strengthen its eventual happy resolution.

  Charlotte, unwittingly, is also responsible for an insight into Weightman’s feelings for her sister. In her letter to Ellen of 20 January 1842 she writes of him: ‘He sits opposite Anne at church sighing softly and looking out of the corners of his eyes to win her affection – and Anne is so quiet, her looks so downcast – they are a picture.’11

  Overcome the hint of bitterness and jealousy in Charlotte’s letter and what impression do we get of Anne and Weightman, two years after they first met? They are undoubtedly flirting with each other, hiding their love away, but still being observed by those who understand the true emotions within their hearts.

  During those two years, their feelings had grown for each other. In the summer of 1841 especially, during Anne’s month-long break from the Robinsons, they would have spent a lot of time in each other’s company, as both Charlotte and Emily were abroad.12 Could they have come to some sort of understanding during this time? They were both too poor to make a commitment to each other at that moment in their lives, but if they were patient and remained true then a bright future could be achieved. If Patrick saw anything of this, he would certainly have approved in a way that he steadfastly did not when a later curate asked for the hand of his daughter Charlotte. After all, Patrick admitted that he looked on Weightman as like a son to him13 – high praise indeed considering his fractious relationships with other assistant curates.

  For now, Anne would have to cling to her dreams of a future life with her William. She would have to make do with the exchanged glances in church, the brushing of hands when nobody was looki
ng, the sighs and whispers. In the meantime she would delight in finding a man who she deemed worthy of her love. Even Charlotte now conceded that she might have judged him too harshly. She had once called him ‘unclerical’14 but had found evidence that he was anything but.

  Charlotte saw Weightman returning to the parsonage late one evening looking sad and tired. Patrick asked him what was wrong. He replied that he was in low spirits because he had just been to see a poor young girl who was dying. The girl turned out to be Susan Bland, one of Charlotte’s Sunday school pupils. She visited the house the next day and found that Susan was indeed dying, but also that Weightman had not only visited them but had taken them a bottle of wine and a jar of preserves. Mrs Bland added that ‘he was always good-natured to poor folks, and seemed to have a deal of feeling and kind-heartedness about him’.15 At last, Charlotte was forced to grudgingly concede to Ellen that ‘he is not all selfishness and vanity’.16

  This aspect of Weightman’s character coincides exactly with that of Edmund Weston in Agnes Grey. We read of Weston taking a particular interest in poor people, visiting the sick, reading to them, rescuing their pets and delivering them uncalled for gifts and provisions, even though he had little himself. This is Anne’s true tribute to the man she had loved, the man she still loved, after she had been mourning him for nearly five years.

  In the summer of 1841, Weightman was called to Ripon to be ordained as a fully fledged priest in his own right.17 The ordination took place in August 1840, and Anne believed that he would go from there to visit her at Thorp Green. It could be that they had already arranged this with each other through hushed conversations or secretly passed notes. Each day that passed without him made her more downcast, as shown in her ‘Lines Written at Thorp Green’ at the start of this chapter. Anne’s wording in both her prose and poetry is always precise and carefully chosen, and in this case it is illuminating, ‘Oh didst thou know my longings … thou wouldst not thus delay’.18

  Anne does not write that she hopes he would not delay but that he definitely would not delay. Anne here is supremely confident of William Weightman’s love for her. If she could only reveal it in its fullness, rather than the carefully shielded form, he would be hers.

  It would even have been socially acceptable for Weightman to call upon Anne at Thorp Green, for he had connections with the family of her mistress, Mrs Lydia Robinson. Mrs Robinson’s father, the Reverend Thomas Gisborne, was a leading name in the establishment of Durham University where Weightman had been an early scholar. This canon of Durham set up the university’s natural history museum in 183519 and also provided the money for a Gisborne scholarship at the university.

  Reverend Gisborne also arranged for his grandson Lionel Gisborne, the nephew of Lydia Robinson, to enter Durham University in 1839.20 Further to these facts, the co-founder of the university, Archdeadon Charles Thorp,21 was the first cousin once removed to Anne’s other employer, Edmund Robinson. It is certain that Weightman would have seen and known both Thomas Gisborne and Charles Thorp in his time at university, looking up to them with the reverence they deserved, and it is also possible that he may have known Lionel Gisborne.

  Under these circumstances, Weightman would have been a welcome guest of the Robinsons at Thorp Green. It could even be that Weightman knew that the Robinsons were looking for a new governess in early 1840 and had personally recommended Anne to them.

  Anne waited, yet Weightman did not come. It is this that made her say that she ‘disliked the situation and wished to change it for another’. She longed to be with this man who, as her poems express, could bring about a feeling of bliss just by looking at her. She would endure further, she would wait longer, what else could she do? During Anne’s winter and summer visits to Haworth over the year following the ordination, they grew closer still, yet time was not on their side.

  We have seen how Weightman loved to visit the sick and dying, providing comfort at their time of greatest need, but in a town as infectious and disease ridden as Haworth this was a very dangerous game. He contracted cholera from one such patient and rapidly faded, dying two weeks later on 6 September 1842, aged 28, with a distraught Branwell weeping by his death bed.22

  It was a noble end for a noble and honourable man, and the sense in which he was revered and loved by all who knew him was soon shown. Patrick Brontë delivered the funeral service for his erstwhile assistant, and for the first time at Haworth he read it rather than preaching extempore as usual. Patrick explained that this was because his parishioners had asked him to publish the funeral sermon afterwards, which he duly did.23

  The sermon is a fine tribute to a man who was clearly loved by Patrick. Reverend Brontë was not a man who gave credit lightly, but on this occasion his praise was genuine and fulsome. He began the sermon, after discussing a reading from the first letter of St Paul to the Corinthians, by contrasting Weightman with others who make a good first impression that fails to stay the course:

  There are many, who for a short time can please, and even astonish – but, who soon retrograde and fall into dispute. His character wore well; the surest proof of real worth … But what he gained at first, he did not lose afterwards. He had those qualities which enabled him rather to gain ground.24

  Patrick also praises him as a preacher, as well as an excellent teacher at the Sunday school. Weightman was ‘himself a friend to many, and an enemy to none, so by a kind of reaction, he had, I think I might say, no enemies and many friends’,25 and he states that ‘we were always like father and son’.26 Perhaps the greatest praise that Patrick could give to William Weightman, however, was when he observed that he ‘had classical attainments of the first order, and, above all, his religious principles were sound and orthodox’.27

  The event was also reported by the Leeds Intelligencer of 29 October 1842:

  He [Weightman] was admired and beloved for his sterling piety, his amiability, and cheerfulness, and the loss of so zealous and useful a Minister of Christ is deeply felt by those among whom he lived and laboured. This discourse [the funeral sermon], plain and touching in its language, simple yet expressive, pays a well deserved tribute to the memory of the preacher’s beloved and lamented fellow labourer.28

  This contemporary account of a man noted for his ‘sterling piety’ is a far cry from the image that some have of him today, or that Charlotte chose to portray in her letters. The parishioners would not hear a word said against him, and two years later they had raised enough money to have a tribute to Weightman placed on the wall of the church.29

  One woman was not there to mourn him on that dark, damp October day. Anne had not even been told that William was ill. When she found out, probably through Branwell writing to her at Thorp Green, that her beloved William was dead, it would have felt as if the sky was falling and the ground shaking beneath her feet. She would spend the day weeping in her room, and even the Robinsons would know not to disturb her. How could it be that the world was carrying on just as it was yesterday and the day before, did it not know what had happened? Did it not know that something had changed, that it was less than before? Anne Brontë’s world, and her writing, would never be the same again.

  Notes

  1. Chitham, Edward, A Life of Anne Brontë, p.67

  2. The Durham University Calendar, For 1842, appendix p.IV

  3. Leeds Intelligencer, 23 June 1838

  4. Chitham, Edward, A Life of Anne Brontë, pp.80–2

  5. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, pp.223–4

  6. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.228

  7. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.247

  8. Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, p.325

  9. Brontë, Patrick, A Funeral Sermon for the Late Rev. William Weightman, M.A., p.5

  10. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.211

  11. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.
279

  12. Charlotte and Emily were at school in Brussels, see Chapter 10

  13. Brontë, Patrick, A Funeral Sermon for the Late Rev. William Weightman, M.A., p.7

  14. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.261

  15. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.229

  16. Ibid.

  17. Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, p.339

  18. Bell, C., E. and A., Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, p.140 (published in this collection under the alternative title of ‘Appeal’)

  19. The Durham University Calendar, For 1842, p.21

  20. The Durham University Calendar, For 1842, p.63

  21. The Durham University Calendar, For 1842, appendix p.v

  22. Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, pp.402–3

  23. Brontë, Patrick, A Funeral Sermon for the Late Rev. William Weightman, M.A., p.2

  24. Brontë, Patrick, A Funeral Sermon for the Late Rev. William Weightman, M.A., pp.6–7

  25. Brontë, Patrick, A Funeral Sermon for the Late Rev. William Weightman, M.A., p.8

  26. Brontë, Patrick, A Funeral Sermon for the Late Rev. William Weightman, M.A., p.7

  27. Ibid.

  28. Leeds Intelligencer, 29 October 1842

  29. The plaque is still within the church of St Michael and All Angels, Haworth. The inscription reads, ‘This Monument was erected by the inhabitants in Memory of the Late WILLIAM WEIGHTMAN Who died September 6th, 1842, aged 26 years [he was actually 28] And was buried in this church On the tenth of the same month. He was three years Curate of Haworth And by the congregation and parishioners In general was greatly respected For his orthodox principles, active zeal, moral habits, learning, mildness, and affability.’