by E. F. Benson
A Paper to be opened
when Anne is
25 years old, or
my next birthday after
if
all be well.
Emily Jane Brontë. July the 30th 1841.
It is Friday evening near 9 o’clock — wild rainy weather. I am seated in the dining room, having just concluded tidying our desk-boxes, writing this document. Papa is in the parlour — Aunt upstairs in her room. She has been reading Blackwood’s Magazine to Papa. Victoria and Adelaide are ensconsed in the peat-house, Keeper is in the kitchen and Hero in his cage. We are all stout and hearty, as I hope is the case with Charlotte, Branwell and Anne, of whom the first is at John White Esq: Upperwood House, Rawdon, the second is at Luddenden Foot, and the third is, I believe, at Scarborough, inditing perhaps a paper corresponding to this.
A scheme is at present in agitation for setting us up in a school of our own, as yet nothing is determined, but I hope and trust it may go on and prosper, and answer our highest expectations. This day four years I wonder whether we shall still be dragging on in our present condition or established to our hearts’ content. Time will show.
I guess that at the time appointed for the opening of this paper, we, i.e., Charlotte, Anne, and I shall be all merrily seated in our own sitting room in some pleasant and flourishing seminary, having just gathered in from the midsummer lady-day. Our debts will be paid off, and we shall have cash in hand to a considerable amount. Papa, Aunt and Branwell will either have been or be coming to visit us. It will be a fine warm summer evening, very different from this bleak look-out, and Anne and I will perchance slip out into the garden for a few minutes to peruse our papers. I hope that either this or something better will be the case.
The Gondaland are at present in a threatening state, but there is no open rupture as yet. All the princes and princesses of the Royalty are at the Palace of Instruction. I have a good many books on hand, but I am sorry to say that as usual I make small progress with any. However, I have just made a new regularity paper! and I must verb sap to do great things. And now I close, sending from far an exhortation of courage, boys! courage, to exiled and harassed Anne, wishing she was here.
Certainly this document presents a cheerful picture: there is no hint of the tragic sibyl about the girl who so contentedly records the past, and looks forward to the next four years in so optimistic a fashion. She was alone with her aunt and her father, with a bulldog and a hawk, looking forward to the moment four years hence when she and Anne will ‘peruse’ the papers they ‘indited’ to-day, and Anne will know that four years ago she sent an exhortation of courage to the harassed exile. Charlotte was exiled too, and, as her letters so volubly testify, abundantly harassed by the vulgarities of the low-born, but to her sufferings Emily makes no allusion. It is just worth while to notice this, though without stressing it. The debts which she refers to and hopes will be paid when the school prospers are clearly those which may be incurred, owing to initial expenses. It has been suggested that they were debts incurred by Branwell, but for this there is no particle of evidence. It is, however, worth mentioning, since we abundantly find in the Brontë-Saga suggestions that the sisters went out as governesses and tried to start a school in order to pay his debts.
It is the complete reticence of Emily concerning the fire, mystical and rapturous and sombre, which we know inspired her, that strikes us most in this domestic record. Not the tip of a red tongue of flame nor any hot breath of the furnace escapes, nor yet the cold wind of the arctic night which encompassed her when only a few days before the date of this pleasant and contented chronicle she wrote that untitled poem beginning,
I see around me tombstones grey Stretching their shadows far away.
Icy despair at the woes of this transitory life suffuses it, yet there glows in it lambent fire, the hot, passionate love of the Earth, as when, in Wuthering Heights, Catherine dreams that she was dead and so miserable in Heaven that in anger the angels threw her out, and she woke sobbing for joy to find herself once more in the heather of the moor. To the record of her inner life Emily gave access to none — not even to the secret eyes of Anne, who, four years later, as we shall see in the second group of these papers, said that she knew only that Emily was writing poetry, and wondered what it was about.
Herein we begin to see something of the vital difference between the nature of Charlotte and Emily, the abysmal, impassable gulf that separated the great talent of the one from the genius of the other. Charlotte in her novels used not once, but over and over again, both in motive and episode, the actual experiences of her life — its detested occupations, the relationship between employer and employed as she encountered them in her schoolings, bitterly caricaturing those who had offended her. Emily, on the other hand, save in a few commemorative poems, never drew from external experience — her inspiration, like that of the mystic, came wholly from within, and her work glowed and was fed by the fire and wine of the soul that dwelt apart.
Anne’s corresponding paper, written at Scarborough, fills in the hitherto faint outline of her piety and gentleness. She does not like her present situation at Thorp Green and wishes to change it: owing to Charlotte’s plans, she actually remained there for four years more. She gives almost precisely the same details about the past movements of the family as Emily does, adding the exact ages of them all in years and months. Charlotte’s various situations are recorded in a short sentence, and about Emily she makes a comment which is surely significant: ‘We are all of us,’ she writes, ‘doing something for our own livelihood, except Emily, who, however, is as busy as any of us, and in reality earns her food and raiment as much as we do.’ We can certainly infer from this that there had been a feeling in someone’s mind — and there is no need to ask in whose — that Emily should not be idling at home while her sisters were earning their living. With regard to the future, Anne too hopes that the idea of the joint school will materialise, but quotes from one of her own poems:
How little know we what we are, How less what we may be.
... What will the next four years bring forth? Providence only knows. But we have sustained very little alteration since that time [i.e. of the last papers four years ago]. I have the same faults that I had then, only I have more wisdom and experience, and a little more self-possession than I then enjoyed. I am now engaged in writing the fourth volume of Solala Vernon’s Life.
These papers, then, beyond what they present to us of domestic furnishings, are valuable as showing us Emily moving about content and cheerful, but silent as Wuthering Heights itself lying white beneath its winter snows about the things that truly concerned her, and of Anne, uncomplaining and patient, meekly accepting the decrees of Providence and busy, pathetically busy, over the fourth volume of Solala Vernon’s Life, for neither in verse nor prose had she more than the most mediocre talent. These two sisters wrote solely for each other. Charlotte has no part in their secret papers, and both their pens seem to pass over her name without comment. But Emily sends a message of encouragement to Anne, and Anne speaks up on Emily’s behalf, as if someone had unjustly reproached her for idleness.
Emily Brontë From a painting by Branwell Brontë in the National Portrait Gallery.
Charlotte had gone back to Dewsbury Moor before these papers were written; now there came for her a letter from her friend Mary Taylor, who, with her sister Martha, was at school at Brussels, and the gift of a silk scarf and a pair of kid gloves. This letter first suggested to her an idea which proved to have a profound effect on her life. She wrote to Ellen about it:
Mary’s letter spoke of some of the pictures and cathedrals she had seen — pictures the most exquisite, cathedrals the most venerable. I hardly know what swelled to my throat as I read her letter: such a vehement impatience of restraint and steady work, such a strong wish for wings — wings such as wealth can furnish: such an earnest thirst to see, to know, to learn: something internal seemed to expand boldly for a minute. I was tantalised with the consciousne
ss of faculties unexercised: then all collapsed, and I despaired.
But the collapse was but momentary. Mary’s letter immediately kindled in her a spark that should soon blaze high. It crept along in her mind and presently it united itself with the other fire that always burned there, namely, the school-keeping scheme. She began to wonder whether her longing to see the pictures and cathedrals of which Mary spoke could not be gratified in conjunction with the other. How much more likely she and her sisters would be to succeed with their school if a further education, the acquisition of a larger knowledge of French and German, could be acquired at Brussels!
But just then another opportunity came in view, and it looked as if the prospect of setting up a school (or rather of taking over one that already existed) was capable of instant realisation. Miss Margaret Wooler, at whose establishment at Dewsbury Moor Charlotte had been a teacher and Emily and Anne pupils, had now retired, leaving the place to be carried on by her sister. Now this sister intended to give it up, for it had not prospered lately, and Miss Wooler proposed to Charlotte that she should take it on and try to revive it, singly at first, then in conjunction with Emily and Anne; she also offered her the use of her furniture. Charlotte cordially accepted this very generous proposal, but pending its completion, she sat down to think. Her aunt had agreed to advance a loan up to £150 to meet initial expenses, but now, since the furniture of the house would be lent her, that loan might be used in other ways. Before Miss Wooler answered her letter of acceptance, she wrote to Aunt Branwell as follows:
A plan has been approved by Mr. and Mrs. White and others, which I wish now to impart to you. My friends recommend me if I desire to secure permanent success, to delay commencing the school for six months longer, and by all means to contrive by hook or by crook, to spend the intervening time in some school on the continent. They say schools in England are so numerous, competition so great, that without some such step towards attracting superiority we shall probably have a very hard struggle and may fail in the end. They say, moreover, that the loan of £100, which you have been so kind as to offer us, will perhaps not be all required now, as Miss Wooler will lend us the furniture; and that, if the speculation is intended to be a good and successful one, half the sum at least ought to be paid out in the manner I have mentioned, thereby insuring a more speedy repayment both of interest and capital.
I would not go to France or to Paris. I would go to Brussels in Belgium. The cost of the journey there, at the dearest rate of travelling, would be £5: living is there little more than half as dear as it is in England, and the facilities for education are equal or superior to any other place in Europe. In half a year I could acquire a thorough familiarity with French, and could improve greatly in Italian and even get a dash of German, i.e., provided my health continued as good as it is now. Martha Taylor is now staying in Brussels, at a first-rate establishment there. I should not think of going to the Château de Kockleberg, where she is resident, as the terms are much too high; but if I wrote to her, she, with the assistance of Mrs. Jenkins, the wife of the British Consul, would be able to secure me a cheap and decent residence and respectable protection. I should have the opportunity of seeing her frequently, she would make me acquainted with the city, and, with the assistance of her cousins, I should probably in time be introduced to connections far more improving, polished, and cultivated than any I have yet known.
These are advantages which would turn to vast account, when we actually commenced a school — and, if Emily could share them with me, only for a single half year, we could take a footing in the world afterwards which we can never do now. I say Emily instead of Anne: for Anne might take her turn at some future period, if our school answered. I feel certain, while I am writing, that you will see the propriety of what I say: you always like to use your money to the best advantage, you are not fond of making shabby purchases: when you do confer a favour, it is often done in style, and depend upon it £50 or £100, thus laid out, would be well employed. Of course, I know of no other friend in the world to whom I could apply on this subject, except yourself. I feel an absolute conviction that, if the advantage were allowed us, it would be the making of us for life. Papa will perhaps think it a wild and ambitious scheme, but who can rise in the world without ambition? When he left Ireland to go to Cambridge, he was as ambitious as I am now. I want us all to get on. I know we have talents, and I want them to be turned to account. I look to you, aunt, to help us. I think you will not refuse. I know, if you consent, it shall not be my fault if you ever repent your kindness.
A more tactful and diplomatic letter could not be conceived. Charlotte had the support of the Whites and other friends for her suggestion. She congratulated her aunt upon the wise way in which she always laid out her money, a foe to shabby presents; she disarmed her father’s possible opposition by the flattering reminder that he, too, in his day had been ambitious, or he, the son of an Irish peasant, would never have succeeded in getting a University education, and she made a powerful suggestion to her aunt that she was going to consent. Miss Branwell’s answer, though there were points yet to be settled, was favourable enough to cause Charlotte to cancel her acceptance of Miss Wooler’s offer. She did so apparently without much sense of gratitude for it, writing to Ellen:
I am not going to Dewsbury Moor as far as I can see at present. It was a decent friendly proposal on Miss Wooler’s part, and cancels all or most of her little foibles in my estimation; but Dewsbury Moor is a poisoned place to me, besides I burn to go somewhere else. I think, Nell, I see a chance of getting to Brussels.... Dewsbury Moor was an obscure dreary place not adapted for a school.
She had finished with Dewsbury Moor.
Charlotte had now completely transformed the original idea of the school to be started with Miss Branwell’s assistance, where the three sisters might be together, though that was to come later, with the prospect of the greater success that their improved educational equipment would give them. This entailed many changes in the first plan, which, with her masterly efficiency, she now proceeded to make, for the sake of the general object of them ‘all getting on.’ Emily, she settled with Miss Branwell’s approval, was to accompany her to Brussels. ‘I wished for one, at least, of my sisters,’ she wrote to Ellen, ‘to share the advantage with me. I fixed on Emily. She deserved the reward, I knew.’ How far Emily appreciated that reward is another question: she had pined with home-sickness when she had been only three months from Haworth at Miss Wooler’s school, and now she was to be transplanted to Brussels for six. Indeed, Charlotte’s plans went far beyond that, now that Miss Branwell had sanctioned them so far, for in a few weeks she wrote to Emily, saying:
Before our half year in Brussels is completed, you and I will have to seek employment abroad. It is not my intention to retrace my steps home till twelve months if all continues well, and we and those at home retain good health.
Then there was Anne. A few months before, Charlotte had written to Ellen most tenderly about her, for Anne was unhappy in her situation as governess to the family of Mrs. Robinson:
I have one aching feeling at my heart. It is about Anne; she has so much to endure; far, far more than I have. When my thoughts turn to her, they always see her as a patient persecuted stranger. I know what concealed susceptibility is in her nature, when her feelings are wounded. I wish I could be with her to administer a little balm. She is more lonely, less gifted with the power of making friends even than I am.
Now there is a very sincere and affectionate anxiety in these words; of that there can be no doubt. But the Brussels plan, for the eventual benefit of them all, now overrode in Charlotte’s mind all other considerations. ‘Anne for the present,’ as Charlotte wrote to Emily, ‘seems omitted in it, but if all goes right I trust she will derive her full share of benefit from it in the end.’ But why, we cannot help asking, should not Charlotte have arranged that Anne, over whose loneliness she mourned, longing to be with her, should accompany her to Brussels where they would be together, wh
ile Emily, who was abjectly miserable away from Haworth, remained at home? The answer seems plain: Emily was wasting her time at Haworth, she was doing nothing towards the project of the school, for which further education at Brussels would be of such assistance, and she was earning nothing. This seems to accord with Anne’s gentle protest in her secret paper that Emily was as busy as any of them, and the implication that Charlotte thought otherwise. Anne, on the other hand, was gaining experience in teaching, and was earning her livelihood. So, much as she disliked the situation, and much as Charlotte longed to be with her and comfort her loneliness, it was better that Anne should remain at Thorp Green and continue, as Charlotte wrote in her notes on Anne’s poems, ‘to taste the cup of life as it is mixed for the class termed “governesses,”’ while Emily came to Brussels. They all must get on, and all must work, at whatever personal sacrifice.
There were still many inquiries to be made about a suitable establishment at Brussels when the sisters were together again at Haworth for Christmas, 1841. Branwell was expected, but did not arrive; he had not been seen at Haworth for the last five months, though the station at Luddenden Foot, where he had gone in what Charlotte ironically called ‘his wild, wandering, adventurous, romantic, knight-errant-like capacity of ticket collector,’ was not more than a dozen miles off. When he did arrive in January 1842, it was because he had been dismissed from his high estate. He had made a habit of leaving the ticket-office in that solitary shanty in care of his colleague the porter, and had spent his days drinking heavily in hospitable farm-houses and pot-houses of the neighbourhood. His colleague had pocketed the money which he received for the tickets, and when the audit was made, the cash that should have been received by the ticket-collector was far from tallying with the price of the tickets that had been purchased. Though Branwell was not personally suspected of theft, his neglect and carelessness of his duties had been monstrous, and it was no wonder that the Leeds and Manchester Railway Company had no further use for him.