The life of Charlotte Brontë

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  7 (p. 27) fervour of a Wesley... fanaticism of a Whitefield: John Wesley (1703-1791) and George Whitefield (1714-1770) led Methodism, a religious movement that valued personal spiritualism over ritualistic devotion, from within the Anglican Church. Methodists adopted open-air preaching in order to reach marginalized members of the community. Doctrinal differences ultimately led to the severing of the relationship between Whitefield, a strict Calvinist who believed in predestination, and Wesley, a follower of Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius, who maintained that individuals could effect their own salvation. Methodism’s formal break with the established church occurred in 1795.

  8 (p. 30) Dr. Scoresby: William Scoresby (1789-1857) was an Arctic explorer before he entered the Anglican ministry and later became the vicar of Bradford (1839-1847); he was a source of local history and local color for Gaskell.

  9 (p. 32) circumstances which I have described: Samuel Redhead’s son-in-law disputed Gaskell’s version of events. Gaskell responded in the third edition by appending testimony from two eyewitnesses supporting her account.

  CHAPTER III

  1 (p. 34) Patrick Brontë... County Down in Ireland: For Patrick Brontë’s biography, see John Lock and W T. Dixon, A Man of Sorrow: The Life, Letters and Times of the Rev. Patrick Brontë, 1777-1861 (London: Nelson, 1965), and Barker, The Brontës; see “For Further Reading.”

  2 (p. 35) military duties which they had to perform: During the period 1803-1805 Napoleon was gathering forces at Boulogne with the intention of invading England, a threat that ended with Nelson’s victory off Cape Trafalgar, Spain. One of Patrick Brontë’s Cambridge classmates, Lord Palmerston (1784—1865), later became prime minister (1855-1858, 1859-1865).

  3 (p. 39) of Mr. Brontë’s composing: Patrick Brontë was a published author at the time of his marriage. He had published two collections of moral poems, Cottage Poems (1811) and the Rural Minstrel (1813), as well as the didactic romances Cottage in the Wood (1815) and The Maid of Killarney (1818). He also weighed in on religious and social issues of the day by contributing to regional newspapers throughout his career.

  4 (p. 39) “Advice to a Lady”: George, Baron Lyttelton’s Advice to a Lady (1733) was typical of eighteenth-century conduct literature for girls. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) summarized and lampooned it: “Be plain in Dress and sober in your Diet; / In short my Dearee, kiss me, and be quiet.”

  5 (p. 43) “potatoes for their dinner”: The false claim that Patrick Brontë enforced a vegetarian diet and the charge of wastefulness, to which servants Nancy and Sarah Garrs objected, were retracted in the third edition. Gaskell wanted only to show that “no stingy motive” induced Patrick to deny his children meat (The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, letter 368). This and much other disputed information about life at the parsonage came from the nurse who attended Mrs. Brontë in her final illness.

  6 (p. 44) the ideas of Rousseau and Mr. Day: Political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was also an educational theorist. In Émile (1762) he advocated educating boys to exercise the independence accorded them by nature rather than making them conform to their social station; girls, however, were to be molded with the exclusive purpose of pleasing their future partners. Rousseau influenced Thomas Day (1748-1789), whose History of Sandford and Merton (1783-1789) was one of the first novels written for children.

  7 (p. 45) reduced to the condition of stools: The catalogue of Patrick’s “volcanic wrath,” which included burning his children’s boots, shredding his wife’s silk dresses, burning a hearthrug, and sawing the backs off chairs was omitted, at Patrick’s request, in the third edition.

  8 (p. 45) days of the Luddites: The Luddite riots (1811-1816) were staged by organized gangs of cloth workers who roamed the manufacturing districts destroying the machinery they felt was displacing them from their jobs. Brontë would set Shirley (1849) amid this uprising.

  CHAPTER IV

  1 (p. 53) William Carus Wilson: The Rev. William Carus Wilson (1791-1859), a Calvinist Evangelical who was the model for Jane Eyre’s Reverend Brocklehurst, established the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge. Like his fictional counterpart, Carus Wilson wrote devotional tracts full of fire and brimstone for children. He was a polarizing figure. A vitriolic public debate erupted with the publication of the Life about the degree of culpability he had, if any, in his management of Cowan Bridge (see Wise and Symington, eds., The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships, and Correspondence, vol. 4, appendix 1).

  2 (p. 53) certain sum was raised annually in subscription: Subscribers to the school included such prominent Evangelicals as moralist Hannah More and abolitionist William Wilberforce.

  3 (p. 59) Miss Temple, the superintendent: Miss Ann Evans (1792-1856) was superintendent of the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge. Evans died before the publication of the Life, but her husband and a Miss Andrews, who was the model for Miss Scatcherd in Jane Eyre (1847), came to the defense of William Carus Wilson, who ran the school (see note 1, above).

  4 (p. 59) after Maria’s and Elizabeth’s deaths: Charlotte and Emily in fact did not return to the school after their sisters’ deaths. According to school records, they withdrew on June 1, 1825.

  CHAPTER V

  1 (p. 64) Tabby: Tabitha Aykroyd (the name had various spellings) served the Brontës from her mid-fifties until her death in 1855. For Gaskell, and perhaps for Brontë as well, she embodied England’s folkloric past and Yorkshire superstition. Bessie in Jane Eyre and Martha in Shirley share some of Tabby’s qualities. Aykroyd was a Methodist and a class leader at her chapel.

  2 (p. 69) “We then chose who should be chief men in our islands”: The Brontë children’s choice of heroes evidences their Toryism and the degree to which the periodicals their father received informed their worldview. Branwell selects the fictional John Bull, Englishness personified, and the poet Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). Emily chooses literary men: novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), and John Gibson Lockhart (1794—1854), contributor to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and later editor of the Quarterly Review. Charlotte picks the Duke of Wellington (see note 3, below), and Christopher North, the fictional persona adopted by John Wilson, editor of Blackwood’s. Anne chooses Lord William Bentinck, the governor-general of Bengal who abolished suttee (self-cremation of a Hindu widow on the funeral pyre of her husband as a mark of her devotion to him). With the exception of Emily, they each choose an eminent physician as well.

  3 (p. 69) “Wellington and two sons”: Charlotte’s lifelong hero was Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852), the Irish-born career soldier and Tory politician who was made duke of Wellington for his victories over Napoleon, which included the decisive Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Wellington later served as prime minister (1828-1830). The Marquis of Douro and Lord Charles Wellesley (Brontë’s favored persona in her younger years) were Wellington’s two sons.

  4 (p. 70) Blackwood’s Magazine: The Leeds Intelligencer (founded 1754) and the Leeds Mercury (founded 1718) were regional newspapers. The character John Bull appeared in a series of satirical Tory pamphlets (1712). Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (founded 1817) was a monthly magazine with a Tory bent that covered literary and political issues.

  5 (p. 71) “Friendship’s Offering for 1829”: The reference is to an annual miscellany of poetry, prose, and engravings published by Smith, Elder and Company, later to be Brontë’s publisher.

  6 (p. 72) ”the great Catholic question”: The Catholic Emancipation Act (1829), the culmination of a series of laws passed beginning in the eighteenth century, lifted most civil restrictions imposed on Catholics and allowed them to stand for Parliament.

  CHAPTER VI

  1 (p. 78) Miss Woolers, who lived at Roe Head: The four Wooler sisters ran the school Charlotte Brontë and her sisters attended at Roe Head. Charlotte was subsequently employed as a teacher there. The school relocated to Dewsbury Moor in 1837. Margaret Wooler became a lasting friend of Charlotte’s.

  2 (p. 81) E.’s home was five miles away: El
len Nussey (1817-1897), Brontë’s closest friend, lived at Brookroyd House, Birstall, Yorkshire. Some suggest that the Brontë—Nussey correspondence, which forms the basis for much of the Life, results in a one-dimensional portrait of Brontë, who notably did not discuss her literary affairs with Nussey. See the Introduction for a more detailed account of their relationship.

  3 (p. 81) (The Rose and Jessie Yorke of “Shirley”): Mary (1817-1893) and Martha (1819-1842) Taylor. The Taylors lived in Gomersal and later at Hunsworth, both in Yorkshire. Brontë met them at Roe Head; they later attended school at the same time in Brussels, where Martha died. Mary was independent and outspoken, and she championed women’s rights. Dismayed by the employment opportunities available to women in England, Mary emigrated to New Zealand in 1845. She destroyed all of Brontë’s letters but the one describing her first visit to the offices of Smith, Elder and Company.

  4 (p. 83) “She knew the names of the two ministries... the Reform Bill”: The Reform Bill of 1832 extended enfranchisement by lowering property qualifications for voters and redistributing parliamentary seats from rural areas (known as “rotten” or “pocket” boroughs) controlled by the gentry, to heavily populated urban areas that had previously been underrepresented.

  5 (p. 84) ‘Frazer’s Magazine’: A Tory periodical founded in 1830, Fraser’s Magazine was a rival to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.

  6 (p. 88) burning of Cartwright’s Mill: In April 1812 more than one hundred Luddites attacked William Cartwright’s mill in Huddersfield, not far from Haworth. Cartwright defended his property with the aid of a few soldiers. Two Luddites were killed. Several weeks later the Luddites murdered local mill owner William Horsfall. Brontë dramatized this incident in Shirley.

  7 (p. 89) Mr. Roberson, of Heald’s Hall: Reverend Hammond Roberson (1757-1841) functions almost as a foil for Patrick Brontë, who, though a Tory, was far more tolerant and less doctrinaire in his allegiances than Roberson was. Although Brontë supported the mill owners in the conflict with the Luddites, in other disputes he supported the workers.

  CHAPTER VII

  1 (pp. 96-97) “J‘arrivait d Haworth... elles auront ce plaisir”: “I arrived at Haworth in perfect safety without the slightest accident or misfortune. My little sisters ran out of the house to meet me as soon as the carriage could be seen, and they embraced me with as much eagerness and pleasure as if I had been away for more than a year. My Papa, my aunt, and the gentleman of whom my brother had spoken, were all assembled in the parlor, and in a little while I went in as well. It is often Heaven’s order that when one loses a pleasure there is another ready to take its place. Just so, I had to leave very dear friends, but I returned to a family as dear and beloved. Likewise, as you were losing me (dare I believe that my departure caused you pain?) you awaited the arrival of your brother and sister. I gave my sisters the apples you kindly sent them; they said that they are certain Miss E. is very amiable and good; all are extremely impatient to see you; I hope that in very few months time they will have that pleasure” (translated by Anne Taranto) .

  2 (p. 97) Wordsworth’s and Southey’s poems: Robert Southey (1774-1843) was poet laureate from 1813 until his death. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was considered the founder, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), of the Romantic movement in poetry; Wordsworth became poet laureate upon Southey’s death.

  3 (pp 97-98) “mad Methodist Magazines”: The Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine (founded 1778) and The Lady’s Magazine, or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (1770-1848) were publications Mrs. Brontë brought with her from Cornwall when she married. Gaskell includes these examples to show the imaginative legacy Brontë received from her mother.

  4 (p. 100) “British Essayists” ... ”The Lounger”: British Essayists (1807-1808) was a compilation by the biographer and prolific editor Alexander Chalmers. Essays of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) appeared in the periodical The Rambler (1750-1752). Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831) was editor and chief contributor to the Scottish periodicals The Mirrour (1779-1780) and The Lounger (1785-1787).

  5 (p. 103) “read the rest fearlessly”: Brontë’s course of reading for Nussey contains some books that were thought inappropriate for young women, such as Lord Byron’s Cain (1821) and Don Juan (1819-1824), and Shakespeare’s bawdier comedies. This list is a testimony to Patrick Brontë’s liberal attitude toward his daughter’s education, whether from benign neglect, as Gaskell posits, or other motives.

  CHAPTER VIII

  1 (p. 109) in her place at Miss Wooler’s: The quoted paragraph that follows is taken from Brontë prefatory remarks to the selection of her sisters’ poetry appended to the second edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey (1850).

  2 (p. 110) duties of the day... tedious and monotonous: Brontë’s fragmentary“ Roe Head Journal,” which Gaskell does not quote from, is more expressive than are her letters to Nussey about her frustration with her current employment and her consequent depression. Brontë registers her anger at being interrupted by a student in a moment of inspiration: “I felt as if I could have written gloriously.... But just then a Dolt came up with a lesson. I thought I should have vomited” (Barker, ed. The Brontës: A Life in Letters, p. 39).

  3 (p. 110) an event happened... good deal of interest: This anecdote detailing the supposed genesis of Jane Eyre is omitted in the third edition.

  4 (p. 112) any other poet: In the third edition Gaskell adds Mary Taylor’s comment that Cowper’s popular poem “The Castaway” was a favorite in the Brontë household. Gaskell’s insistence on the affinity between Brontë and Cowper stems from her desire to find an analogue for Brontë in the mainstream Christian poet who struggled with depression and religious doubt. Brontë does not include Cowper among the “first-rate” poets in the reading list she prepares for Ellen Nussey (see note 4 to volume I, chapter VII).

  5 (p. 112) “they fly from my lips as if I were Tantalus:” Tantalus is the Greek mythological figure punished with eternal thirst and hunger for transgressing against the gods; he is thus an emblem of thwarted desire.

  6 (p. 117) Coleridge: Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849), a minor poet and critic, was the son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (endnote 1 to volume I, chapter VII).

  7 (p. 117) given by the poet to Mr. Quillinan : Edward Quillinan was Wordsworth’s son-in-law. Gaskell is mistaken about Wordsworth’s estimation of Branwell’s letter. In fact, according to Southey, Wordsworth was “disgusted” by the letter’s “gross flattery” and “abuse of other poets“” and declined to answer it. Why he preserved it is unclear (Southey to Caroline Bowles, March 27, 1837; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 1, p. 171, note 1).

  8 (p. 132) some one having a slight resemblance... in holy orders: Ellen Nussey’s brother, Henry, proposed to Brontë in the spring of 1839. He received a prompt rejection: ”I am not the serious, grave, cool-headed individual you suppose—you would think me romantic and eccentric.... I will never for the sake of... escaping the stigma of an old maid take a worthy man whom I am conscious I cannot render happy“ (Charlotte Brontë to Henry Nussey, March 5, 1839; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 1, pp. 185-186).

  9 (p. 134) “Anne’s departure”: This refers to Anne’s leaving to be a governess to the Inghams at Blake Hall. She was dismissed within the year

  10 (p. 135) engaged as a governess: Charlotte was employed by the Sidgwicks of Stonegappe, near Lothersdale, from May to July 1839. She was responsible for two children aged four and six. Charlotte complained to her sister Emily that Mrs. Sidgwick cared “nothing in the world about me except how to contrive the greatest possible quantity of labour may be squeezed out of me” (Charlotte Brontë to Emily Brontë, June 8, 1839; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 1, p. 191).

  11 (p. 139) the assistance of a curate: William Weightman (1814-1842) was the curate at Haworth for three years (1839-1842). Although Weightman was an integral and beloved member of the parsonage while he served there, Gaskell suppresses almost all information about him, presumably bec
ause, in letters Gaskell omits, Charlotte Brontë and Nussey both manifest signs of infatuation with the young curate.

  12 (p. 140) his own curate: Brontë’s second proposal of marriage came from David Pryce (sometimes Bryce; 1811-1840), curate to William Hodgson, who was formerly Patrick Brontë’s curate.

  13 (p. 143) “drop my subscription to the Jews”: “The Jews” is shorthand for the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, founded in 1809.

  CHAPTER IX

  1 (p. 146) the “Spectator”: A periodical published by Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and Richard Steele (1672-1729), the Spectator (1711-1712) satirized the mores of its times.

  2 (p. 148) employed her leisure hours in writing a story: Brontë was writing “Ashworth,” an untitled and incomplete novel. See Christine Alexander, ed., Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p. 204.

  3 (p. 149) “whether his ‘C.T.’ meant Charles Timms or Charlotte Tomkins”: Gaskell, anxious about the letter’s irreverent tone, liberally edits out material without using ellipses, as she does elsewhere, to indicate missing text. Among the comments Gaskell censors is Brontë’s taunting remark on gender anonymity: “Several young gentlemen curl their hair and wear corsets—and several young ladies are excellent whips and by no means despicable jockies,” and her facetious wonder that Hartley Coleridge deigned to read her “demi-semi” novelette (Charlotte Brontë, draft letter to H. Coleridge, December 1840; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 1, p. 237).

  4 (p. 151) “Puseyite or a Hookist:” This is a reference to the followers of Edward Bouverie Pusey and Walter Farquhar Hook, important figures of the Oxford Movement, which advocated a return to formalism in the Anglican Church.