In Search of Anne Brontë

by Nick Holland

  Anne knew that she too must not die, not with her soul and mind in the turmoil that it was. Her frail body struggled for survival, but she realised that hope must come from elsewhere. Whether she was to live or die, she had to find the truth about God, had to confront the dark despair that had being growing within her. Anne was going through a purification of fire, and she would never be the same.

  Notes

  1. Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, p.233

  2. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, pp.129–30

  3. Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, p.74

  4. Ibid.

  5. Brontë, Anne, Agnes Grey, p.11

  6. Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, p.68

  7. Lemon, Charles, Early Visitors to Haworth: From Ellen Nussey to Virginia Woolf, p.6

  8. Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, p.67

  9. Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, pp.67–8

  10. Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, p.67

  11. Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, p.236

  12. Green, Dudley, Patrick Brontë Father of Genius, p.140

  13. Gaskell, Elizabeth, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, pp.133–5

  14. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.140

  15. The Brontës, Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal, pp.453–4

  16. The Brontës, Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal, pp.165–6

  17. The Brontës, Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal, p.163

  18. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.144

  19. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.154

  20. Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre, pp.25–6

  7

  GOING OUT INTO THE WORLD

  How delightful it would be to be a governess! To go out into the world; to enter upon a new life; to act for myself; to exercise my unused faculties; to try my unknown powers; to earn my own maintenance, and something to comfort and help my father, mother, and sister, besides exonerating them from the provision of my food and clothing; to show papa what his little Agnes could do; to convince mama and Mary that I was not quite the helpless, thoughtless being they supposed.

  Agnes Grey

  Charlotte leaned in closer to Anne. She was so weak by this point that she could barely be heard, but she had something important to say. Charlotte wiped away the tears, as her 17-year-old sister asked to see a priest. Charlotte nodded and said that she would fetch Reverend Carter, but Anne shook her head and whispered again. There was one specific man she wanted to see, and the choice would have shocked her elder sister.

  The young priest that Anne asked for, and who immediately answered her call, wasn’t a member of the Church of England at all. He was James la Trobe, a member of the Moravian priesthood, and his views would have been an anathema to the Calvinist clergy around Mirfield.

  The Moravian Church had been formed in what is now the Czech Republic in the fifteenth century, but after centuries of persecution the Church found itself exiled to Germany in 1722. From there they spread into Western Europe, and it was the Wesleys, among others, who invited the Moravian Church to come to England. They had a church in Mirfield itself and another at nearby Gomersal, where the Taylor family, including Charlotte’s friend Mary, attended. It may have been from Mary herself or via the retelling of Charlotte that Anne first heard of this Moravian priest, or it could have been that she knew of him because of his occasional visits to Roe Head; however she heard of him, she liked the sound of his teachings.

  The Moravian Church has elements of traditional Protestantism within it and elements of Methodism with which it was once thought it would combine, but it also has beliefs of its very own. It places a great value on having a personal relationship with God, an almost mystical belief. They also had no time at all for the hellfire and eternal damnation that the Calvinists preached, or for the idea of only an elect few being allowed into heaven.

  When James la Trobe heard that a girl whose life was in the balance asked to see him, he answered the call with haste. It mattered little to him whether she was a member of his Church or not: when duty called for la Trobe he answered it. His reputation for kindness and compassion was well deserved, and he would later go on to be made a bishop within the Moravian Church. He found Anne very ill in bed, and he shooed out Charlotte and Miss Wooler so that he could have a private conversation with her.

  He soon realised that Anne’s primary concern wasn’t the very real possibility of impending death but for her soul after the event. She opened up to him about the terrible dark fears that she had kept within her since she was a small child and which had spread throughout her like a slow and deadly poison. Holding her emaciated hand, la Trobe told her his view of God as a caring, loving being. He explained that no soul is doomed forever and that after a period of purgatory, everyone, however wicked they have been, can attain heaven. Sixty years later, in 1897, James la Trobe still recalled the event, as revealed in a letter to his friend William Scruton:

  She was suffering from a severe attack of gastric fever which brought her very low, and her voice was barely a whisper; her life hung on a slender thread. She soon got over the shyness natural on seeing a perfect stranger. The words of love, from Jesus, opened her ear to my words, and she was very grateful for my visits. I found her well acquainted with the main truths of the Bible respecting our salvation, but seeing them more through the law than the gospel, more as a requirement from God than His gift in His Son, but her heart opened to the sweet views of salvation, pardon, and peace in the blood of Christ, and, had she died then, I would have counted her His redeemed and ransomed child. It was not til I read Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Life’ [he refers to the biography of Charlotte written by Elizabeth Gaskell] that I recognised my interesting patient at Roe Head.1

  His words were exactly what Anne wanted to hear. They chimed perfectly with her own beliefs, and now at last she understood that they weren’t heresy at all, they were held by many other people. Her spirit restored through a number of other visits from the Moravian priest, her health battled back as well, until she was well enough to return to Haworth with Charlotte.

  Her battle with doubt, however, was one that would never be completely won, and she would struggle with it throughout her life. At the moments when she needed it most, however, this new-found belief in a loving and forgiving God would return and sustain her. From that moment on, the always-religious Anne would become even more devout, until her faith became the ultimate driving force in her life.

  The Moravian Church would not forget Anne either. A poem of hers of 1848 entitled ‘The Three Guides’ looks at a trio of spirits that can guide people. The first two are the spirit of earth (which may have been intended as a reference to the nature-worshipping Emily) and the spirit of pride (in reference to Charlotte), but the third spirit, the spirit of faith, represents Anne herself, and this section is now a part of the official Moravian hymn book.

  Anne implores the spirit of faith to clasp her hand and guide her through life. Night’s terrors ‘oft appal’ her but the magical power of the spirit of faith will lead her through unharmed. She concludes:

  Spirit of Faith! I’ll go with thee;

  Thou, if I hold thee fast,

  Wilt guide, defend, and strengthen me,

  And bring me home at last.

  By thy help, all things I can do;

  In thy strength all things bear.

  Teach me, for thou art just and true,

  Smile on me, – thou art fair!2

  Even though Charlotte was once more going through her own traumas, Anne’s illness had at last awoken Charlotte to the neglect with which she had treated her own sister; the hacking cough and pallid skin that Anne had developed snapped Charlotte out of her self-absorption. It was the same symptoms that Charlotte, as a little girl, had seen strike Maria and Elizabeth: it bore all the hallmarks of the early stages of consumption.

  Charlotte plunged h
ead first into shock, grief and guilt. She wrestled with the conviction that she herself was to blame for the way she had ignored and ostracised Anne, but unable to cope with that accusation against herself she instead turned her fury on Miss Wooler. In a stormy meeting she accused the headmistress of ignoring Anne’s illness and of causing the conditions that allowed it to develop. In a letter just after the event, Charlotte admits to Ellen that she had told Miss Wooler ‘one or two rather plain truths – which set her a-crying’ and later says that Miss Wooler was ‘crying for two days and two nights together’, but that she did not regret it because her ‘warm temper quite got the better of me’.3

  Charlotte’s ‘warm temper’ when unchecked could reduce the strongest person to tears, but on this occasion it had the desired effect. Miss Wooler wrote immediately to Reverend Brontë, explaining the situation, at which point he called them both back to Haworth. Back home, Anne recovered her strength again, so that in that same letter of 4 January 1838 Charlotte could conclude, ‘Anne is now much better – though she still requires a great deal of care. However, I am relieved from my worst fears respecting her.’4

  Anne would not return to the school after the Christmas break, yet despite her illnesses she had excelled in her lessons and had spent longer in a formal education than any of her siblings. Despite their recent altercation, Miss Wooler begged Charlotte to return to her teaching role, which she reluctantly acceded to.

  At the turn of 1838 Miss Wooler had moved the school from Mirfield. She had realised that Roe Head was much too large for her needs and so had found new premises 2 miles away in Dewsbury Moor. The new school, known as Heald’s House, was also on an exposed and hilly area, but the building itself was much less inviting. Charlotte hated this new location from the first moment. Her depression was growing worse, and she found herself imagining that she had a secret illness that nobody else could recognise.

  Her mental torments were now becoming plain and could no longer be hidden from view. A doctor was called for and advised Charlotte to quit the school if ‘she valued her life’. It was obvious to all parties now that Charlotte could no longer cope with the daily drudgery of the teaching life, and she left the school on 23 May. Perhaps surprisingly, it was not to be the end of her relationship with Miss Wooler. They continued to correspond and eventually became firm friends, with the old headmistress and employer later giving Charlotte away at her wedding.

  What had Anne achieved in her time at Roe Head? She had greatly enhanced her education, had proved that she could overcome her natural reserve and mix in company, and had found a new and stronger faith, along with a new love of life. It was also a place where she indulged her passion for poetry free of the influence of her sister Emily, and it was where she discovered how writing could be used to give vent to the secret feelings and emotions that she kept within her. She also produced some of her most beautiful sketches there, including one of Roe Head itself just weeks after her arrival. The school is still instantly recognisable from her sketch today. It is now called Holly Bank Trust and provides specialist education for people with severe disabilities, as well as full term of life care in its residential areas and hospices. Anne, and Miss Wooler, would be proud of it.

  One thing above all else Anne gained from her school days: independence. No more would she unquestioningly accept what her aunt taught her on religious matters, and no more would she invariably fall under the influence of Emily, although she still loved them both dearly. She had proved to herself, in the most trying of circumstances, that she could survive in the wider world, and now she was determined to prove it to others too.

  Emily had surprised everyone in September 1837 by taking a job as a teacher at Law Hill School near Halifax. Although Emily knew how alien the role was to her nature, she felt that she had let her family and herself down at Roe Head and wanted to give ‘conventional’ life one more try. The conditions were very harsh for a woman who loved freedom as much as Emily, with duties running from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m. every day. By March 1838 she was unable to take any more and returned to Haworth. She would never take a job again.

  Thus it was that in 1838 the sisters found themselves reunited in Haworth once more, with the moorland walks and the communal ‘scribbling’ sessions that entailed. In each other’s company they each regained their physical and mental vigour, but it was clear that things could not continue that way indefinitely.

  Branwell had left at the start of the year for a job as a portrait painter in Bradford, a trade in which he showed much initial promise and which he had long planned to do. As a 16-year-old he had painted what is now infamous as the ‘pillar portrait’, the only painting of the three sisters together. Anne is on the left-hand side of the picture, with Emily, inevitably, by her side. Branwell was next in the painting, with Charlotte on the right-hand side. Unhappy with his own likeness, he later painted over himself with a white pillar.

  Even with Branwell absent, there were too many mouths to feed at the parsonage: something had to be done. Emily had thrown herself into a new role as housekeeper, assisting the now infirm Tabby, and was proving to be a real asset. It may have been expected that Charlotte would soon try to find a new position, but she still bore the mental scars of her teaching experience.

  Anne, however, had a very different point of view. She positively wanted to take a job. Her greatest dream was to see the world, do something useful in her life and provide a financial contribution for her family. She communicated this to them, but, mindful of her recent illnesses, they were reluctant to encourage her. Anne had more faith in herself than her family had; she felt in, what was for her, full health again and wanted to make the most of the knowledge and talents she had developed.

  What was more, Anne was tired of being treated as the baby of the house. Her quiet personality and perceived physical frailty meant that she was often excused from the duties that her sisters carried out, even when she begged to be treated on equal terms. She puts this frustration into the voice of Agnes Grey when she too is looking to leave home to support her family:

  Though a woman in my own estimation, I was still a child in theirs … Whenever I offered to assist her, I received such an answer as – ‘No, love, you cannot indeed – there’s nothing here you can do. Go and help your sister or get her to take a walk with you … Go and practise your music, or play with the kitten’.5

  Anne was persistent, insisting that she would make an excellent governess. When her father and aunt said that she was too young, being just 18 at the time, she insisted that was an advantage, as being not far removed from them in age she would have a better understanding of what the children in her charge were thinking.

  Just as when Anne had asked to be allowed to attend school, Patrick saw that there was no dissuading her. She was becoming a forthright woman who knew her own mind, and, even if privately, he would have been proud of this. The plan was agreed, now all Anne had to do was find a suitable position, and she was to find it would take her back to a familiar location.

  The schoolgirls at Roe Head, and their teachers, had their own pews at the imposing Mirfield Parish Church. The front pew, however, was reserved for one of the foremost and wealthiest families of the district, and major benefactors of the church, the Inghams. Anne must have often looked severely over at the young children in the family misbehaving during the service, little knowing that two years later she would be much better acquainted with them.

  The Inghams lived at Blake Hall, an imposing manor house that dominated the town growing around it. The original hall was built, on the site of an even earlier building, in 1745 for a Maurice Avison, but it soon came into the hands of the Ingham family. The Inghams had for centuries been lords of the manor in all but name, and by the start of the nineteenth century they had great material wealth. The present master and mistress of the hall were Joshua and Mary Ingham, and with a growing family they decided that they needed a professional governess for their children.

  We can safely assume tha
t Anne received a helping hand in obtaining the position from Miss Wooler, who Anne would have contacted for assistance in finding a suitable post. Margaret was well known to the Inghams, and they also had close ties with two priests familiar to Anne, and who could vouch for her character, Reverend Edward Nicholl Carter and the Moravian James la Trobe, as well as with the Nussey family, who were by now so well known to the Brontës. With reassuring reports received on Anne’s mature and serious nature and on her scholarly prowess, she commenced her employment at Blake Hall on 8 April 1839.

  This was a time of great excitement for Anne. At last she was really starting out in life and doing something that would benefit herself, her family and the children in her care. She had supreme confidence in her own ability, but as she headed out into the world for the first time completely on her own, she must also have felt a little trepidation and a surfeit of emotions. As usual, she would have kept these emotions in check, only to reveal them in writing, as Agnes Grey recalls:

  I rose, washed, dressed, swallowed a hasty breakfast, received the fond embraces of my father, mother, and sister, kissed the cat – to the great scandal of Sally, the maid – shook hands with her, mounted the gig, drew my veil over my face, and then, but not till then, burst into a flood of tears.6

  Whilst leaving her family was a wrench, she loved children and looked forward to meeting her new charges. As she approached the imposing gates of Blake Hall, she could not have known that these particular children would put her to the greatest test of her abilities, or that her experiences there would later form the initial part of her first novel.