In Search of Anne Brontë

by Nick Holland

  10

  SEPARATIONS AND RETURNS

  I will not mourn thee, lovely one,

  Though thou art torn away.

  ’Tis said that if the morning sun

  Arise with dazzling ray

  And shed a bright and burning beam

  Athwart the glittering main,

  ’Ere noon shall fall that laughing gleam

  Engulfed in clouds and rain …

  And yet I cannot check my sighs,

  Thou wert so young and fair,

  More bright than summer morning skies,

  But stern death would not spare;

  He would not pass our darling by

  Nor grant one hour’s delay,

  But rudely closed his shining eye

  And frowned his smile away.

  That angel smile that late so much

  Could my fond heart rejoice;

  And he has silenced by his touch

  The music of thy voice.

  I’ll weep no more thine early doom,

  But O! I still must mourn

  The pleasures buried in thy tomb,

  For they will not return.

  ‘To –’

  Anne Brontë wrote this poem of mourning, of frustrated love, in December 1842, around three months after the death of William Weightman. She would not name the lost lover to whom she addressed the poem, simply giving it the enigmatic title of ‘To –‘. Her love for him would be something she would take to her grave, and yet it would never fade or diminish within Anne’s heart.

  This was the first of many poems that Anne would write about Weightman after his death, and although he is never named, there can be no doubt that he is the subject. To Anne, the brief love she had felt, and in some way received, was a gift from God, and she would nurture it and keep it fresh, in the hope and belief that one day it could be nurtured again and brought to fruition in a new celestial sphere. It was the only romantic love she would ever give or receive: Weightman was dead, but she would be forever faithful to his memory. To do anything else would, to Anne, be to cheapen the emotions that she’d felt.

  As the years passed by she would write poems beginning with lines such as ‘Oh they have robbed me of the hope, my spirit held so dear’,1 and ‘Severed and gone so many years! And art thou still so dear to me’.2 There would be no let up in the mourning expressed in these powerful poems, yet they were also a cathartic experience for Anne and part of the healing process. For Anne there were two ways to deal with the sorrows, challenges and torments that life presented. One was through the power of prayer, and she would value nothing higher than those moments when she could share her private thoughts and feelings with her Lord, and the other was through the power of poetry.

  Anne’s belief in an almost mystical healing power of poetic composition is detailed in the chapter entitled ‘Confessions’ within Agnes Grey, when the heroine reveals:

  When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry – and often find it, too … now I fly to it again, with greater avidity than ever, because I seemed to need it more.3

  At this point in the novel Agnes is distraught because Weston is about to leave the parish, and she fears she will never see him again; this compares with the fact that Weightman had left and Anne would never see him on this earth again. Agnes then reveals one of her poems, one of her ‘pillars of witness’ as she refers to them, which is in fact Anne’s poem ‘Oh They Have Robbed Me of the Hope’. The lines that Agnes ends this poem with, within the novel, and her commentary on them are very revealing of Anne’s thoughts in the days, months and years following Weightman’s death:

  They will not let me see that face

  I so delight to see;

  And they have taken all thy smiles,

  And all thy love from me.

  Well, let them seize on all they can; –

  One treasure still is mine, –

  A heart that loves to think on thee,

  And feels the worth of thine.

  Yes, at least, they could not deprive me of that: I could think of him day and night; and I could feel that he was worthy to be thought of. Nobody knew him as I did; nobody could appreciate him as I did; nobody could love him as I – could, if I might.4

  Once more in Agnes Grey, Anne is giving us a tantalising clue to her real life. This is, as she says, a pillar of witness, this is a ‘confession’ not of Agnes but of Anne herself.

  In Anne’s life sorrow often came in pairs, for example when her sisters Maria and Elizabeth died in quick succession, and later when the same occurred with Branwell and Emily, and so it proved to be in late 1842. She had not been able to attend William Weightman’s funeral, but a month later she was back in Haworth from Thorp Green for the funeral of her Aunt Elizabeth Branwell.

  Aunt Branwell was 66 years old, and for most of her time in Haworth had been in relatively robust health, but shortly after William Weightman’s death, her own health sharply deteriorated. She had an obstruction of the bowel that caused her terrible agony, reminiscent of the agonies she had seen her own sister go through in the same parsonage twenty-one years earlier. She died on 29 October 1842, and again it was a distraught Branwell who was by the bedside.

  Branwell had taken the death of his good friend William Weightman hard, but he was to feel the death of his aunt even more. She was much more than an aunt to him: in every way he looked up to her as a mother figure. She had shown him love, and he in return had loved her more than any other living thing. To some extent her sternness had also helped to curb some of Branwell’s excesses, and now severed from this guiding adult, he would spend the next years accelerating his descent into drink and drug dependency.

  Anne too would feel the death much more than Charlotte and Emily. Aunt Branwell was the only mother figure she could remember, and they had been very close when Anne was a child. Recognising this, the Robinsons allowed Anne to return home for the funeral on 3 November. During the service given by her father, Anne would join Branwell in an outpouring of grief as she mourned for two people.

  Many previous Brontë biographies have emphasised the stern nature of Aunt Branwell, and her unflinching morality, yet she could also be very kind and held a genuine warmth of affection for her sister’s children. She would buy them books, toys and clothing, and she would not forget them in her death either. Elizabeth Branwell left each of her nieces £300 in her will, a sum equivalent to around £30,000 in 2016 and equal to six years’ wages for Anne.5 Branwell, who his aunt had loved dearly but latterly despaired of, was disinherited. Their immediate money problems and worries about finding long-term situations for which they were suited subsided, and they could now turn their thoughts to another dream, one with which they had already been making progress.

  Anne wasn’t the only Brontë to return to Haworth for their aunt’s funeral. Charlotte and Emily had also been away, and even further afield. In fact, they had been in Belgium, learning the skills they hoped would enable them to establish their own school.

  In Anne’s diary paper of July 1841, she writes, ‘We are thinking of setting up a school of our own but nothing definite is settled about it yet and we do not know if we should be able to or not – I hope we shall.’6

  Emily, in her corresponding diary paper, writes, ‘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.’7

  The sisters had been discussing the idea of setting up their own school for some time, possibly even since Charlotte had left the employ of Miss Wooler at Heald’s House. Since that date, Charlotte, Emily and Anne had all tried teaching and governess positions, but Anne was the only one who had the endurance and a temperament sanguine enough to make any sort of success at it. It
was clear that they were not suited to working for others, yet they still thought they could be teachers, if only it were in their own establishment.

  Setting up a school would take funds, of course, which none of the sisters had, and so in the summer of 1841 they decided to approach their aunt to see if she could help. Aunt Branwell knew that she was getting old, although she could not have known how close she was to her death, and wanted dearly to see her nephew and nieces make a success of their lives. She had brought a collection of jewellery of considerable value from Cornwall with her and had also a moderate personal wealth. The scheme put to her seemed sensible and measured, two of her favourite qualities, and so she agreed in principal to lending them £150 if they could form concrete plans.8

  This prospect must have seemed delightful to Anne in 1841. She would be able to get away from the Robinsons and return closer to home, and to William Weightman. She would also be able to make fuller use of her not insubstantial learning. Every night, whether at Thorp Green or Scarborough, she would kneel by her bed and pray silently, ‘Lord, let us find a suitable school that we can work in together’. In that summer of 1841, it seemed that her prayers were being answered.

  Margaret Wooler had decided to give up her school at Dewsbury Moor and wrote to Charlotte Brontë offering it to her. If agreement could be reached, Miss Wooler would continue to reside in the building, and in return Charlotte could have free use of the furniture. This must have seemed a perfect opportunity, as the costs would be much lower than could otherwise be expected, and they would also have the experience of Miss Wooler to call upon for advice.

  Aunt Branwell agreed to lend the girls £100 to take over the school, but to the despair of Anne and Emily, by the time this had been agreed Charlotte had already changed her mind. She had received a letter from her friend Mary Taylor, who was at that time living in Brussels with her sister Martha. She read of the wonderful architecture that could be found in Brussels, and she longed to see it herself. Charlotte, in stark contrast to her sisters, relished the idea of travelling abroad. The reports she had read in childhood of exploration in Africa, and the maps she pored over, had not only fired her creativity, they had also kindled the desire to travel herself. If she and her sisters took over the school in Heald’s House now it would be a lifelong commitment, her dreams of seeing the world would be over. The plan would have to be modified; it would have to be delayed.

  Charlotte now approached her aunt with a new suggestion. French and German were highly prized attainments, she explained, so if they could offer these skills, as well as sharpening up the learning they already had, then they would be able to attract a much better quality of pupil and would stand a much greater chance of lasting success. She therefore asked her aunt to pay for her and Emily to study in Belgium, after which they would be in a position to return and start their school with Anne.

  It’s hard to say how much of this Charlotte actually believed and how much was a ruse to get her aunt to pay for her to see the world, but Aunt Branwell was eventually convinced and plans were made for Charlotte and Emily to travel to Belgium at the beginning of 1842. It was a body blow for Anne at the commencement of what was to be a year full of tragedy.

  Charlotte, as always, had taken organisational duties upon herself, but it has to be asked why she chose Emily to accompany her rather than Anne, who would seem much more suited to the task. Emily had lasted just weeks at Roe Head with Charlotte before becoming so homesick that Charlotte thought she would die if not returned to Haworth, and yet now she was about to take her to a whole new country.

  Charlotte herself offered an explanation of sorts in the letter she sent to her aunt on 29 September 1841, from a short-lived situation that she was currently holding with the White family of Rawdon:

  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 could never do now. I say Emily instead of Anne; for Anne might take her turn at some future period, if our school answered.9

  Here Charlotte is anticipating that her aunt may not have been so willing to fund the enterprise if she felt her favourite niece, Anne, was being excluded, yet as Anne watched the sisters preparing to travel at the end of 1841, excluded must have been just how she felt. Emily was simply taking the place because she was older, and that was only the right and natural order of things, Anne would have been told, but she may have suspected deeper and darker motives.

  Was Charlotte remembering the way that she had snubbed her desperately ill youngest sister in the Roe Head days and fearful of something that could bring those guilty memories back? Could it even have been borne of jealousy? Charlotte and Emily were ostensibly travelling to learn language skills, yet Anne was already competent in French and Latin in a way that her sisters weren’t. Whilst retaining her innate veneer of modesty, she was burning with indignation inside. Anne knew that it was she who possessed the finest intellect of all the sisters, had the finest educational attainments and was proving she could make a living for herself in the world, and yet once again she found herself being ignored and almost belittled by Charlotte.

  As always in these circumstances, Anne swallowed her indignation beneath a veil of resigned acceptance. Pragmatism was needed now: if Emily was going to be away, somebody would have to take her place in the parsonage, and Anne wasted no time in suggesting herself for the role. Before returning to Haworth for Christmas 1841, she called for a meeting with her employers and there tendered her resignation, explaining that she would now be needed at home. To her dismay, Mr and Mrs Robinson countered that they were very pleased with the progress their daughters were making under Anne, that she had in fact become indispensable to them and that they could not possibly let her go. Thus it was that in January 1842 the sisters went their separate ways again. Charlotte and Emily were en route to the excitement of a new adventure, even if that excitement was being felt much more keenly by Charlotte than Emily, while Anne was returning to her lonely drudgery at Thorp Green Hall.

  Patrick accompanied his daughters on their journey to Brussels; it was the first time that any of them had left the confines of Britain. He had initially been reluctant to agree with Charlotte’s scheme, but his daughter had reminded him of the ambition he himself had shown as a young man when he left Ireland for England. ‘I want us all to go on,’ she said, ‘I know we have talents, and I want them to be turned to account.’10

  He was won round, and with a swell of pride he wrote to the Church of England chaplain in Brussels, Reverend Evan Jenkins, for advice on a suitable school. Whilst the Taylor sisters of Gomersal were at the city’s exclusive Château de Koekelberg school, this was far too expensive an establishment to be considered. Reverend Jenkins suggested that an establishment called the Pensionnat Heger would be a suitable and respectable alternative, and it was here that the Brontës left for, with Mary Taylor and her brother Joe as travelling companions, on 2 February 1842.

  After a brief stop in London, where they stayed at the Chapter Coffee House in the shadow of St Paul’s, they made the crossing into mainland Europe. Patrick had prepared for the event by writing down French phrases in a notebook, along with the way in which they should be pronounced. One such example was ‘Demain = de mang – tomorrow’.11 Patrick stayed in Brussels for a week before returning home. A new continental tomorrow was dawning for Charlotte and Emily, but Anne was waking up to the same North Yorkshire sunrise as before.

  In these early months of 1842, Anne had three things to sustain her: her faith, the dream she clung to that when her sisters returned they could at last set up the school they’d talked of and her love for William Weightman, who she had left behind in Haworth. Little did she know that this third consolation was soon to be snatched from her.

  Anne was indeed making good progress with her pupils now, and they were beginning to look up to her with respect and even something approaching love,
yet Anne was far from happy. The landscape around Little Ouseburn was flat and lush, but it could never appeal to her in the way that the moors around Haworth did. She listened at night to the east winds rushing in and imagined how they had travelled across the moors on their way to Thorp Green, carrying messages that only she could hear and understand, carrying love.

  As well as her consoling poetry, Anne had also by this time started to think of writing a prose work that would relate to the world she knew, not the world of Gondal. She also diverted her mind by painting sketches and portraits, including a drawing of 1840 entitled ‘What You Please’. A young woman with long wavy hair is leaning against the bough of a tree, a cloak wrapped around her shoulders. It is an enigmatic picture. The woman seems to be deep in thought, is she walking away from something or towards something? The face of the young woman also bears some resemblance to a watercolour she painted at some time during her tenure as the Robinson’s governess entitled ‘Portrait of a Young Woman’, as well as to a picture she created in June 1842, on which she has written ‘A Very Bad Picture’. This picture too shows a young woman, with long curly hair, fine eyebrows and a straight nose. These two portraits are commonly thought to be of one of the Robinson girls, but could they, and the woman in ‘What you Please’, actually be self-portraits? Certainly they also bear some likeness to the Anne Brontë of Branwell’s ‘pillar portrait’. The main difference is that the young woman in Anne’s portrait has a fuller, rounder face, but we have to remember that Anne was aged around 13 when she featured in Branwell’s portrait, and in those painted around this time by Charlotte, so she could well have developed a rounder face into adulthood.