‘Mary Taylor.’
The Ellen Taylor referred to so frequently was, as I have said, a cousin of Mary’s. Her early death in New Zealand gives the single letter I have of hers a more pathetic interest.
TO MISS CHARLOTTE BRONTË
‘Wellington, N. Z.
‘My dear Miss Brontë, — I shall tell you everything I can think of, since you said in one of your letters to Pag that you wished me to write to you. I have been here a year. It seems a much shorter time, and yet I have thought more and done more than I ever did in my life before. When we arrived, Henry and I were in such a hurry to leave the ship that we didn’t wait to be fetched, but got into the first boat that came alongside. When we landed we inquired where Waring lived, but hadn’t walked far before we met him. I had never seen him before, but he guessed we were the cousins he expected, so caught us and took us along with him. Mary soon joined us, and we went home together. At first I thought Mary was not the least altered, but when I had seen her for about a week I thought she looked rather older. The first night Mary and I sat up till 2 a.m. talking. Mary and I settled we would do something together, and we talked for a fortnight before we decided whether we would have a school or shop; it ended in favour of the shop. Waring thought we had better be quiet, and I believe he still thinks we are doing it for amusement; but he never refuses to help us. He is teaching us book-keeping, and he buys things for us now and then. Mary gets as fierce as a dragon and goes to all the wholesale stores and looks at things, gets patterns, samples, etc., and asks prices, and then comes home, and we talk it over; and then she goes again and buys what we want. She says the people are always civil to her. Our keeping shop astonishes every body here; I believe they think we do it for fun. Some think we shall make nothing of it, or that we shall get tired; and all laugh at us. Before I left home I used to be afraid of being laughed at, but now it has very little effect upon me.
‘Mary and I are settled together now: I can’t do without Mary and she couldn’t get on by herself. I built the house we live in, and we made the plan ourselves, so it suits us. We take it in turns to serve in the shop, and keep the accounts, and do the housework — I mean, Mary takes the shop for a week and I the kitchen, and then we change. I think we shall do very well if no more severe earthquakes come, and if we can prevent fire. When a wooden house takes fire it doesn’t stop; and we have got an oil cask about as high as I am, that would help it. If some sparks go out at the chimney-top the shingles are in danger. The last earthquake but one about a fortnight ago threw down two medicine bottles that were standing on the table and made other things jingle, but did no damage. If we have nothing worse than that I don’t care, but I don’t want the chimney to come down — it would cost £10 to build it up again. Mary is making me stop because it is nearly 9 p.m. and we are going to Waring’s to supper. Good-bye. — Yours truly,
‘Ellen Taylor.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Haworth, July 4th, 1849.
‘I get on as well as I can. Home is not the home it used to be — that you may well conceive; but so far, I get on.
‘I cannot boast of vast benefits derived from change of air yet; but unfortunately I brought back the seeds of a cold with me from that dismal Easton, and I have not got rid of it yet. Still I think I look better than I did before I went. How are you? You have never told me.
‘Mr. Williams has written to me twice since my return, chiefly on the subject of his third daughter, who wishes to be a governess, and has some chances of a presentation to Queen’s College, an establishment connected with the Governess Institution; this will secure her four years of instruction. He says Mr. George Smith is kindly using his influence to obtain votes, but there are so many candidates he is not sanguine of success.
‘I had a long letter from Mary Taylor — interesting but sad, because it contained many allusions to those who are in this world no more. She mentioned you, and seemed impressed with an idea of the lamentable nature of your unoccupied life. She spoke of her own health as being excellent.
‘Give my love to your mother and sisters, and, — Believe me, yours,
‘C. B.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Haworth, May 18th.
‘Dear Ellen, — I inclose Mary Taylor’s letter announcing Ellen’s death, and two last letters — sorrowful documents, all of them. I received them this morning from Hunsworth without any note or directions where to send them, but I think, if I mistake not, Amelia in a previous note told me to transmit them to you. — Yours faithfully,
‘C. B.’
TO MISS CHARLOTTE BRONTË
‘Wellington, N. Z.
‘Dear Charlotte, — I began a letter to you one bitter cold evening last week, but it turned out such a sad one that I have left it and begun again. I am sitting all alone in my own house, or rather what is to be mine when I’ve paid for it. I bought it of Henry when Ellen died — shop and all, and carry on by myself. I have made up my mind not to get any assistance. I have not too much work, and the annoyance of having an unsuitable companion was too great to put up with without necessity. I find now that it was Ellen that made me so busy, and without her to nurse I have plenty of time. I have begun to keep the house very tidy; it makes it less desolate. I take great interest in my trade — as much as I could do in anything that was not all pleasure. But the best part of my life is the excitement of arrivals from England. Reading all the news, written and printed, is like living another life quite separate from this one. The old letters are strange — very, when I begin to read them, but quite familiar notwithstanding. So are all the books and newspapers, though I never see a human being to whom it would ever occur to me to mention anything I read in them. I see your nom de guerre in them sometimes. I saw a criticism on the preface to the second edition of Wuthering Heights. I saw it among the notables who attended Thackeray’s lectures. I have seen it somehow connected with Sir J. K. Shuttleworth. Did he want to marry you, or only to lionise you? or was it somebody else?
‘Your life in London is a “new country” to me, which I cannot even picture to myself. You seem to like it — at least some things in it, and yet your late letters to Mrs. J. Taylor talk of low spirits and illness. “What’s the matter with you now?” as my mother used to say, as if it were the twentieth time in a fortnight. It is really melancholy that now, in the prime of life, in the flush of your hard-earned prosperity, you can’t be well. Did not Miss Martineau improve you? If she did, why not try her and her plan again? But I suppose if you had hope and energy to try, you would be well. Well, it’s nearly dark and you will surely be well when you read this, so what’s the use of writing? I should like well to have some details of your life, but how can I hope for it? I have often tried to give you a picture of mine, but I have not the skill. I get a heap of details, mostly paltry in themselves, and not enough to give you an idea of the whole. Oh, for one hour’s talk! You are getting too far off and beginning to look strange to me. Do you look as you used to do, I wonder? What do you and Ellen Nussey talk about when you meet? There! it’s dark.
‘Sunday night. — I have let the vessel go that was to take this. As there were others going soon I did not much care. I am in the height of cogitation whether to send for some worsted stockings, etc. They will come next year at this time, and who can tell what I shall want then, or shall be doing? Yet hitherto we have sent such orders, and have guessed or known pretty well what we should want. I have just been looking over a list of four pages long in Ellen’s handwriting. These things ought to come by the next vessel, or part of them at least. When tired of that I began to read some pages of “my book” intending to write some more, but went on reading for pleasure. I often do this, and find it very interesting indeed. It does not get on fast, though I have written about one volume and a half. It’s full of music, poverty, disputing, politics, and original views of life. I can’t for the life of me bring the lover into it, nor tell what he’s to do when he comes. Of the men generally I can never
tell what they’ll do next. The women I understand pretty well, and rare tracasserie there is among them — they are perfectly feminine in that respect at least.
‘I am just now in a state of famine. No books and no news from England for this two months. I am thinking of visiting a circulating library from sheer dulness. If I had more time I should get melancholy. No one can prize activity more than I do. I never am long without it than a gloom comes over me. The cloud seems to be always there behind me, and never quite out of sight but when I keep on at a good rate. Fortunately, the more I work the better I like it. I shall take to scrubbing the floor before it’s dirty and polishing pans on the outside in my old age. It is the only thing that gives me an appetite for dinner.
‘Pag.
‘Give my love to Ellen Nussey.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Wellington, N. Z., 8th Jan. 1857.
‘Dear Ellen, — A few days ago I got a letter from you, dated 2nd May 1856, along with some patterns and fashion-book. They seem to have been lost somehow, as the box ought to have come by the Hastings, and only now makes its appearance by the Philip Lang. It has come very apropos for a new year’s gift, and the patterns were not opened twenty-four hours before a silk cape was cut out by one of them. I think I made a very impertinent request when I asked you to give yourself so much trouble. The poor woman for whom I wanted them is now a first-rate dressmaker — her drunken husband, who was her main misfortune, having taken himself off and not been heard of lately.
‘I am glad to hear that Mrs. Gaskell is progressing with the Life.
‘I wish I had kept Charlotte’s letters now, though I never felt it safe to do so until latterly that I have had a home of my own. They would have been much better evidence than my imperfect recollection, and infinitely more interesting. A settled opinion is very likely to look absurd unless you give the grounds for it, and even if I could remember them it might look as if there might be other facts which I have neglected which ought to have altered it. Your news of the “neighbours” is very interesting, especially of Miss Wooler and my old schoolfellows. I wish I knew how to give you some account of my ways here and the effect of my position on me. First of all, it agrees with me. I am in better health than at any time since I left school. My life now is not overburdened with work, and what I do has interest and attraction in it. I think it is that part that I shall think most agreeable when I look back on my death-bed — a number of small pleasures scattered over my way, that, when seen from a distance, will seem to cover it thick. They don’t cover it by any means, but I never had so many.
‘I look after my shopwoman, make out bills, decide who shall have “trust” and who not. Then I go a-buying, not near such an anxious piece of business now that I understand my trade, and have, moreover, a good “credit.” I read a good deal, sometimes on the sofa, a vice I am much given to in hot weather. Then I have some friends — not many, and no geniuses, which fact pray keep strictly to yourself, for how the doings and sayings of Wellington people in England always come out again to New Zealand! They are not very interesting any way. This is my fault in part, for I can’t take interest in their concerns. A book is worth any of them, and a good book worth them all put together.
‘Our east winds are much the pleasantest and healthiest we have. The soft moist north-west brings headache and depression — it even blights the trees. — Yours affectionately,
‘Mary Taylor.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Wellington, 4th June 1858.
‘Dear Ellen, — I have lately heard that you are leaving Brookroyd. I shall not even see Brookroyd again, and one of the people who lived there; and one whom I used to see there I shall never see more. Keep yourself well, dear Ellen, and gather round you as much happiness and interest as you can, and let me find you cheery and thriving when I come. When that will be I don’t yet know; but one thing is sure, I have given over ordering goods from England, so that I must sometime give over for want of anything to sell. The last things ordered I expect to arrive about the beginning of the year 1859. In the course of that year, therefore, I shall be left without anything to do or motive for staying. Possibly this time twelve months I may be leaving Wellington.
‘We are here in the height of a political crisis. The election for the highest office in the province (Superintendent) comes off in about a fortnight. There is altogether a small storm going on in our teacup, quite brisk enough to stir everything in it. My principal interest therein is the sale of election ribbons, though I am afraid, owing to the bad weather, there will be little display. Besides the elections, there is nothing interesting. We all go on pretty well. I have got a pony about four feet high, that carries me about ten miles from Wellington, which is much more than walking distance, to which I have been confined for the last ten years. I have given over most of the work to Miss Smith, who will finally take the business, and if we had fine weather I think I should enjoy myself. My main want here is for books enough to fill up my idle time. It seems to me that when I get home I will spend half my income on books, and sell them when I have read them to make it go further. I know this is absurd, but people with an unsatisfied appetite think they can eat enormously.
‘Remember me kindly to Miss Wooler, and tell me all about her in your next. — Yours affectionately,
‘Mary Taylor.’
Miss Taylor wrote one or two useful letters to Mrs. Gaskell, while the latter was preparing her Memoir of Charlotte Brontë, and her favourable estimate of the book we have already seen. About 1859 or 1860 she returned to England and lived out the remainder of her days in complete seclusion in a Yorkshire home that she built for herself. The novel to which she refers in a letter to her friend never seems to have got itself written, or at least published, for it was not until 1890 that Miss Mary Taylor produced a work of fiction — Miss Miles. This novel strives to inculcate the advantages as well as the duty of women learning to make themselves independent of men. It is well, though not brilliantly written, and might, had the author possessed any of the latter-day gifts of self-advertisement, have attracted the public, if only by the mere fact that its author was a friend of Currer Bell’s. But Miss Taylor, it is clear, hated advertisement, and severely refused to be lionised by Brontë worshippers. Twenty years earlier than Miss Miles, I may add, she had preached the same gospel in less attractive guise. A series of papers in the Victorian Magazine were reprinted under the title of The First Duty of Women. ‘To inculcate the duty of earning money,’ she declares, ‘is the principal point in these articles.’ ‘It is to the feminine half of the world that the commonplace duty of providing for themselves is recommended,’ and she enforces her doctrine with considerable point, and by means of arguments much more accepted in our day than in hers. Miss Taylor died in March 1893, at High Royd, in Yorkshire, at the age of seventy-six. She will always occupy an honourable place in the Brontë story.
CHAPTER X: MARGARET WOOLER
The kindly, placid woman who will ever be remembered as Charlotte Brontë’s schoolmistress, had, it may be safely said, no history. She was a good-hearted woman, who did her work and went to her rest with no possible claim to a place in biography, save only that she assisted in the education of two great women. For that reason her brief story is worth setting forth here.
‘I am afraid we cannot give you very much information about our aunt, Miss Wooler,’ writes one of her kindred. ‘She was the eldest of a large family, born June 10th, 1792. She was extremely intelligent and highly educated, and throughout her long life, which lasted till within a week of completing her ninety-third year, she took the greatest interest in religious, political, and every charitable work, being a life governor to many institutions. Part of her early life was spent in the Isle of Wight with relations, where she was very intimate with the Sewell family, one of whom was the author of Amy Herbert. By her own family, she was ever looked up to with the greatest respect, being always called “Sister” by her brothers and sisters all her life. Aft
er she retired from her school at Roe Head, and afterwards Dewsbury Moor, she used sometimes to make her home for months together with my father and mother at Heckmondwike Vicarage; then she would go away for a few months to the sea-side, either alone or with one of her sisters. The last ten or twelve years of her life were spent at Gomersall, along with two of her sisters and a niece. The three sisters all died within a year, the youngest going first and the eldest last. They are buried in Birstall Churchyard, close to my parents and sister.
‘Miss Brontë was her pupil when at Roe Head; the late Miss Taylor and Miss E. Nussey were also her pupils at the same time. Afterwards Miss Brontë stayed on as governess. My father prepared Miss Brontë for confirmation when he was curate-in-charge at Mirfield Parish Church. When Miss Brontë was married, Miss Wooler was one of the guests. Mr. Brontë, not feeling well enough to go to Church that morning, my aunt gave her away, as she had no other relative there to do it.
‘Miss Wooler kept up a warm friendship with her former pupil, up to the time of her death.
‘My aunt was a most loyal subject, and devotedly attached to the Church. She made a point of reading the Bible steadily through every year, and a chapter out of her Italian Testament each day, for she used to say “she never liked to lose anything she had learnt.” It was always a pleasure, too, if she met with any one who could converse with her in French.
‘I fear these few items will not be of much use, but it is difficult to record anything of one who led such a quiet and retiring, but useful life.’
‘My recollections of Miss Wooler,’ writes Miss Nussey, ‘are, that she was short and stout, but graceful in her movements, very fluent in conversation and with a very sweet voice. She had Charlotte and myself to stay with her sometimes after we left school. We had delightful sitting-up times with her when the pupils had gone to bed. She would treat us so confidentially, relating her six years’ residence in the Isle of Wight with an uncle and aunt — Dr. More and his wife. Dr. More was on the military staff, and the society of the island had claims upon him. Mrs. More was a fine woman and very benevolent. Personally, Miss Wooler was like a lady abbess. She wore white, well-fitting dresses embroidered. Her long hair plaited, formed a coronet, and long large ringlets fell from her head to shoulders. She was not pretty or handsome, but her quiet dignity made her presence imposing. She was nobly scrupulous and conscientious — a woman of the greatest self-denial. Her income was small. She lived on half of it, and gave the remainder to charitable objects.’
Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Page 504
