In Search of Anne Brontë

by Nick Holland

THE UNBREAKABLE SPIRIT

  But as above that mist’s control

  She rose, and brighter shone,

  I felt her light upon my soul;

  But now – that light is gone!

  Thick vapours snatched her from my sight,

  And I was darkling left,

  All in the cold and gloomy night,

  Of light and hope bereft;

  Until, methought, a little star

  Shone forth with trembling way,

  To cheer me with its light afar –

  But that, too, passed away.

  Anon, an earthly meteor blazed

  The gloomy darkness through;

  I smiled, yet trembled while I gazed –

  But that soon vanished too!

  And darker, drearier fell the night

  Upon my spirit then; –

  But what is that faint struggling light?

  Is it the moon again?

  Kind heaven! increase that silvery gleam,

  And bid these clouds depart,

  And let her soft celestial beam

  Restore my fainting heart!

  ‘Fluctuations’

  Branwell’s living had cast a dark shadow over the parsonage that had stretched over a decade and intensified in the three years leading to his demise, but his death brought little respite as each remaining family member reacted in a different way.

  Patrick Brontë felt the blow keenly, although he knew it had been coming. He had already seen his wife and two eldest daughters buried beneath the stone floor of his Haworth church, but as Charlotte revealed in a letter to W.S. Williams on 2 October, he found this death the hardest of them all to take: ‘My poor father naturally thought more of his only son than of his daughters, and much and long has he suffered on his account – he cried out for his loss like David for that of Absalom – My son! My son! And refused at first to be comforted.’1

  As Patrick held his son in his arms in his dying moment, it is natural that his mind should have gone back to that day at Thornton when he held him in his arms as a newborn baby. It had all been for nothing, but at last he was now at peace. From what we know of Patrick, it is unfair of Charlotte to accuse him of thinking more of his only son than of his daughters, but as often with Charlotte, her pronouncements on others are a clue to her own thoughts and actions.

  Charlotte had resented the attention that Patrick had paid to Branwell during the last painful years of his life, believing him unworthy of help. She had turned her back on her closest childhood companion, and now she was overwhelmed by a sense of grief and an even greater sense of guilt. She had not said she loved him, not tried to talk him out of the dark pit into which he had descended, a location that she knew better than most. Like Branwell, she too had questioned the truth of her faith, been spurned by a person she loved and suffered crushing bouts of depression, and yet in his last years she had not even spoken to him. As death claimed Branwell, Charlotte collapsed on to the floor and was gripped by a grief-stricken illness that confined her to her room for a week.

  In the immediate aftermath of Branwell’s death, it was left to Anne to pick up the pieces. It was she who initially wrote to W.S. Williams on 29 September 1848, apologising for her sister’s inability to reply to an earlier letter:

  My sister wishes me to thank you for your two letters, the receipt of which gave her much pleasure, though coming in a season of severe domestic affliction, which has so wrought upon her too delicate constitution as to induce a rather serious indisposition, that renders her unfit for the slightest exertion. Even the light task of writing to a friend is at present too much for her, though, I am happy to inform you, she is now recovering … I am, dear Sir, Yours Sincerely, A. Brontë2

  Anne, who had long been suspected of having the most delicate constitution, was now shaking off the grief that she herself felt and acting as nursemaid to both her eldest sister and her father. Even now she could feel a fatigue growing within her, but she would not fail to do her duty. For Anne the death of her brother had come as a relief, for in the last moment he had sought the salvation that she and her father had urged upon him. We know well how much that meant to Anne; she would now be in no doubt that his soul was saved and forgiven, and that she would meet him again one day in a far better place.

  Three years earlier, when Branwell’s debauchery was approaching its zenith, she had looked ahead to this day, and her short poem ‘The Penitent’ now perfectly encapsulated her feelings:

  I mourn with thee, and yet rejoice

  That thou shouldst sorrow so;

  With angel choirs I join my voice

  To bless the sinners woe.

  Though friends and kindred turn away,

  And laugh thy grief to scorn;

  I hear the great Redeemer say,

  ‘Blessed are ye that mourn.’

  Hold on thy course, nor deem it strange

  That earthly cords are riven:

  Man may lament the wondrous change,

  But ‘there is joy in heaven!’3

  Branwell’s repentance had not only saved his soul but Anne’s as well. The sin she had brought upon herself by introducing her brother to Mrs Robinson, as well as the guilt she felt at having been powerless to prevent his descent into a self-made hell, was now wiped away.

  Emily too had conflicting feelings. It was she who had cared for him, in her own way, in the last years; it was she who had carried him on her shoulders, quite literally. She could not help but be glad that he was free of torment, but one of her great purposes in life had been torn away from her. Her sisters still had their writing, but her great project was now at an end.

  The cessation of Emily’s writing after Wuthering Heights is a mystery that will always remain impossible to solve. All throughout her life she had been a voracious writer, even if her work was mainly on Gondal themes. Between September 1843 to May 1845 she had written in excess of twenty poems, many of them now considered masterpieces, but from the date of publication of Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell she wrote just one more poem, ‘Why Ask to Know the Date, the Clime?’

  She had of course also written her great novel in that period, but the completion of it seems to have marked the end of her creative life. There are three possible reasons for this. The first is that she was horrified at the speculation that the publication of her work was bringing. Even though she had used the pseudonym of Ellis Bell, critics were making pronouncements on the author as a person, many of them wounding to her pride. Under such searing and often unfair scrutiny, the thrill of writing had lost its edge. It could also be that the collapse of Branwell had made her stop writing temporarily, her creative powers dimmed by anguish that she could admit to nobody.

  The third possibility is that she did write further work, but that it was destroyed. Certainly we have a letter from Thomas Newby to Emily discussing the progress of a second novel, but no trace of such a work now remains. Newby’s letter of 15 February 1848 tells Emily that she is right to take her time over this second novel, as if it surpasses her first it could cement her reputation as a great writer.4 It may be questioned whether Newby, never the most reliable man, had got Ellis and Acton mixed up, and whether the letter was therefore intended for Anne, but if this was the case why did Emily keep it in her writing desk? It seems likely that Emily had at least thought of writing again when Branwell’s struggle allowed it, when her muse returned. It was never to return.

  Branwell’s funeral took place on 24 September 1848. By that time his father had rallied in spirits, although Charlotte was still too ill to attend. As was traditional, the funeral service in memory of the deceased was held a week later on 1 October, and on this occasion all of the family were in attendance. At this service Emily was racked by a coughing fit that left her doubled up in the pew. As she removed the handkerchief from her mouth, she took one glance and then hid it swiftly away. On the solemn procession back to the parsonage she cast a glance at the familiar moors that had been such a delight to her. Nobody could
have known that she would never walk outside again.

  Emily was the tallest of the Brontë children, and in stark contrast to her sisters had always been in good health, so the illness that now took hold surprised everyone. In its first days, little was thought of it other than that she had a cold or influenza brought on by the low spirits that were understandable in the circumstances. Anne too had developed a cold and the familiar difficulty in breathing, and a letter from Charlotte to Ellen dated 29 October states, ‘I feel much more uneasy about my sisters than myself just now. Emily’s cold and coughs are very obstinate. Nor can I shut my eyes to Anne’s great delicacy of constitution.’5

  While Anne’s illness appeared to abate, Emily’s was making rapid progress. Every day her coughing fits were getting worse, she was eating little and growing thinner. To the family’s horror, her illness was taking the same form as Branwell’s. Dr Wheelhouse had certified that Branwell died from bronchitis and chronic marasmus, or wasting, but the underlying cause seems clearly to have been tuberculosis. Patrick knew these signs all too well, having watched his daughters Maria and Elizabeth die of the complaint, and he begged Emily to allow a doctor to be fetched. She refused.

  Emily did not believe in the power of doctors, or ‘quackery’ as she called it, but trusted in her own force of will to heal herself. If she kept going, if she refused to bow under the yoke of illness, she would yet regain her health. Only Emily knew the pain and torment she was in, for she refused to acknowledge them herself. In fact, she retreated even further into herself, even from Anne, talking very little and simply smiling and nodding; she knew that her frail voice would be a sign of the weakness that she would not allow to be shown.

  By the end of October it had become a grim farce, a mockery of reality. Emily would not countenance even an allusion to the illness that was becoming every day more apparent in her physical appearance. Charlotte wrote:

  She is a real stoic in illness, she neither seeks nor will accept sympathy. To put any question, to offer any aid is to annoy; she will not yield a step before pain or sickness till forced; not one of her ordinary avocations will she voluntarily renounce. You must look on her and see her do what she is unfit to do, and not dare to say a word.6

  It was at this time that a reviewer in The North American Review, the well-respected E.P. Whipple, took it upon himself to severely critique the Bell brothers as a whole. As a form of light relief from the prevailing gloom, Charlotte read the review to her sisters, as she described in a letter to W.S. Williams on 22 November:

  What a bad set the Bells must be! What appalling books they write! Today as Emily appeared a little easier, I thought the Review would amuse her so I read it aloud to her and Anne. As I sat between them at our quiet but now somewhat melancholy fireside, I studied the two ferocious authors. Ellis, ‘the man of uncommon talents, but dogged, brutal, and morose’, sat leaning back in his easy chair drawing his impeded breath as best he could, and looking, alas! piteously pale and wasted; it is not his wont to laugh, but he smiled half-amused and half in scorn as he listened. Acton was sewing, no emotion ever stirs him to loquacity, so he only smiled too, dropping at the same time a single word of calm amazement to hear his character so darkly portrayed. I wonder what the reviewer would have thought of his own sagacity could he have beheld the pair as I did.7

  By the end of November Charlotte conceded what all knew but none could talk of: it seemed likely that Emily was sliding towards death. Upon hearing of her symptoms, a doctor had confidently diagnosed inflammation of the lungs. On 23 November, Charlotte wrote to Ellen:

  I told you Emily was ill in my last letter – she has not rallied yet – she is very ill: I believe if you were to see her your impression would be that there is no hope: a more hollow, wasted pallid aspect I have not beheld … In this state she resolutely refuses to see a doctor; she will give no explanation of her feelings, she will scarcely allow her illness to be alluded to. Our position is, and has been for some weeks, exquisitely painful. God only knows how all this is to terminate.8

  By 7 December, Charlotte confessed to W.S. Williams that ‘hope and fear fluctuate no more’.9 Even so, Emily would not change her daily routine. She rose at 7 a.m. and by great effort would bring herself slowly down the central staircase, past the grandfather clock, until she reached the hall. From there she would stumble into the kitchen and begin her routine of cooking and cleaning, with Tabby Aykroyd no longer assisting but silently correcting the errors that Emily was making. She refused to return to her room until 10 p.m.

  She also insisted on feeding the dogs as always. Martha Brown recalled how in the height of her frailty Emily collected some breadcrumbs and meat in her hands and walked towards Keeper and Flossy. A sudden gust of wind swept under the door, and so light and weak was Emily that it blew her against the wall. Reeling and nearly falling, she angrily waved away offers of help before proceeding to feed the pets as if nothing had happened.

  Through all this Anne had to look on helpless. She too tried to persuade Emily to see a doctor or to take some of the homeopathic medicine that Charlotte had secured for her from W.S. Williams, but her sister would no longer listen to anybody. Silence reigned as Emily simply squeezed Anne’s hand defiantly. It was a squeeze that spoke of sisterly love, a bond that could never be broken, but also of a will that would not be moved.

  Anne herself had never been averse to taking medicine, but when Emily looked at her sister and remembered the torments she had passed through despite the medicine she took, her conviction that it was all quackery was strengthened. Even though the family’s concerns were concentrated on Emily, she could see that her younger sister herself was ill and suffering a cold that made her too unable to leave the house. The task of walking the dogs now fell to Patrick’s curate Arthur Bell Nicholls, who would do anything for the family and one member of it in particular. It was a task that would remain in his charge for many years.

  Winter brought with it its routine storms and biting winds, but even in this dreadful and silent gloom there was a moment of light for Anne. Anne’s former charges had never forgotten their governess and continued to write to her on an almost daily basis, much to the chagrin of Charlotte, who would forever associate them with Mrs Robinson and the decline of Branwell. This ongoing correspondence had been carefully hidden from Branwell lest it excite his passions too greatly, but now there was no need to hide it.

  In early December there was a surprise visit to the parsonage. Charlotte answered the door, and found two well-dressed, obviously well-to-do ladies. It shows a lot for the love they bore her, in those days when transport to Haworth could be irregular and expensive, that Bessie and Mary Robinson, now Clapham, had come in person to see Anne. They had written to request a visit, but nobody had expected it to happen. As she revealed to Ellen, Charlotte was amazed when she walked into the room in which they were closeted: ‘They seemed overjoyed to see Anne; when I went into the room they were clinging round her like two children – she, meantime, looking perfectly quiet and passive. Their manner evinced more levity and giddiness than pretension or pomposity.’10

  The love of the Robinson girls for Anne could not be denied. She had been strict with them at times, but it had paid off. They were now young women whose lives would be lived under the influence of Anne Brontë, not Lydia Robinson, even though they would never see her again.

  This brief happy day for Anne was soon followed by the darkest days she had known since the death of William Weightman. Charlotte, against Emily’s express order, had consulted a leading homeopathy expert called Dr Epps, but Emily would make no attempt to try the medication he prescribed.

  It can be asked whether Emily wanted to die, whether she was in effect willing it. Certainly it was not a subject she shrank from. Some of her greatest poems talked of deathbeds and the finality that death brings to all. In one of the most memorable moments in Wuthering Heights, she had looked forward to the possibility of an afterlife:

  Heaven did not seem to be my ho
me; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.11

  Emily was certainly not scared of death, she had become scared of nothing, but she would also not willingly have left her beloved moors and her adored Anne behind. Emily would have chosen life if the chance came, but she gave herself up to nature, saying let the natural way of things proceed just as it does with all animals.

  George Smith and W.S. Williams had sent books for Emily to read from Cornhill, but by December her eyesight had failed her, so Charlotte and Anne would take turns reading to her. On the evening of 18 December, the same day that she had been blown against the wall, Charlotte read an essay of Emerson to her, until she realised that Emily was no longer listening. She left her and pledged to finish the essay the next day, but one look at Emily’s face in the morning told her that a change had taken place.

  Emily, terribly gaunt and in great pain, insisted on walking down the stairs once more, although this time she was powerless to stop her sisters helping her. She was guided into the kitchen, where she attempted to resume her duties, but she found them impossible. She was blind, and there could be no more hiding from the truth.

  ‘I will see the doctor now,’ she said, and Martha Brown ran to fetch Dr Wheelhouse. Crushed by sorrow once more, Charlotte ran to the moors searching desperately for a sprig of heather to give to her sister. At last she found a piece, tiny and weather blown, and raced back to the parsonage. She approached Emily but found that she neither saw nor recognised the heather or Charlotte, who dissolved in tears before her.

  The doctor had been and pronounced it a hopeless case: she was in the final stages of consumption. Emily grasped in the darkness for something, and Anne, sensing what she wanted, planted her black comb into her hands. Emily commenced combing her long hair, but the comb slipped from her fingers and fell into the fire. It can still be seen in the Brontë Parsonage Museum today, the middle section burned away. Emily’s legs finally buckled and she fell to the floor. Anne, with help, lifted her sister on to the long black couch in the room where they had composed so many stories and poems together. She took Emily’s hand and stroked it gently, just as Emily had done for her when she was a young child struggling to breathe. At two o’clock that afternoon, with her family around her, the 30-year-old Emily Brontë took her last breath.