She would confound us by knowing things that were out of our range altogether. She was acquainted with most of the short pieces of poetry that we had to learn by heart: would tell us the authors, the poems they were taken from, and sometimes repeat a page or two, and tell us the plot… She used to draw much better, and more quickly, than anything we had seen before, and knew much about celebrated pictures and painters. Whenever an opportunity offered of examining a picture or cut of any kind, she went over it piecemeal, with her eyes close to the paper, looking so long that we used to ask her ‘what she saw in it’. She could always see plenty, and explained it very well. She made poetry and drawing at least exceedingly interesting to me; and then I got the habit, which I have yet, of referring mentally to her opinion on all matters of that kind …13
Charlotte’s evident mental superiority and her diffident way of sharing her knowledge, rather than flaunting it, won her the respect and affection of her fellow pupils; her peculiarities were soon forgotten and she was accepted as one of the girls. Within a few weeks of arriving at the school, she had settled in happily.
The system of education at the school was almost entirely class-based, which meant that new pupils were at first taught individually until they were of the required standard. Even when they were in their classes, the girls could proceed at their own pace, reciting their lessons to Miss Wooler as and when they had learnt them, rather than waiting for the whole class to complete the allotted task. The lessons were the standard ones of the day: geography, history, English grammar and French, with a leavening of music and drawing. Richmal Mangnall’s Historical and Miscellaneous Questions was the staple diet, passages being learnt off by heart and recited back to the teacher. Charlotte arrived at Roe Head with her own copy of this and of Tocquot’s New and Easy Guide to the Pronunciation and Spelling of French, both of which she inscribed with her name and the first date of term. Each book is heavily annotated and scribbled in: the Mangnall has most of its annotations in the section on the history of ancient Greece where names, dates and further information have been added. On the endpapers and inside the back cover of the Tocquot, Charlotte scribbled lists of Shakespearian characters and Latin versions of place names. During her eighteen months at the school she acquired further books, reflecting her grammatical weakness: Pinnock’s Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language and Lindley Murray’s English Grammar.14
Charlotte made such rapid progress in her studies that by the end of her first half year she had risen to the top of her class, carrying off three prizes and being awarded the silver medal for achievement, suitably inscribed ‘Emulation’ on one side and ‘Rewarded’ on the other. She was never to lose her place at the top of the class and so was awarded the medal at the end of each of the three terms she spent at Roe Head. At the end of her second term she also won the school French prize, a copy of the New Testament in French inscribed on the fly leaf ‘French Prize adjudged to Miss Bronte & presented with the Miss Woolers’ kind love. Roe Head Decr 14th 1831’.15
In the ‘accomplishments’ Charlotte also made advances. Like all the young Brontës she had always loved drawing and from 1828 onwards she had spent much time and effort in producing increasingly detailed and skilful pencil drawings and watercolours. By 1830 she was capable of exquisite and delicate paintings, a simple spray of wild roses taken from nature, a prettified copy of a portrait of her mother or a highly coloured copy of J. H. Fuseli’s illustrations to John Milton.16 Her lessons with John Bradley had given her a head start over her fellow pupils, but at Roe Head she was forced to go back to basics. Among her extant pieces are a whole series of pencil studies of mouths, noses, eyes, ears and profiles produced in the first two months of school. She then progressed to pencil head-and-shoulder portraits, reproducing Raphael-style cartoons which appeared in copy-books and the Penny Magazine at the time: at least two of these reminded her of her school-fellows, for one was labelled ‘Amelia Walker’ and another ‘Susan Ledgard’. Thereafter, it was pencil copies of botanical illustrations and landscapes, drawings from life not being encouraged except for the single instance of a drawing of Roe Head.17 Though the course did not foster originality, it gave a sound basis for future artistic effort.
Charlotte’s instinctive love of and ear for music were quietly discouraged, not because she was without talent, but because she could not see her notes without stooping so dreadfully that it was feared she might permanently affect her posture.18
What Charlotte had initially lacked in formal education, she more than made up for by her application to study. She had a set purpose in mind and she deeply felt the responsibility that rested on her: she was an object of expense to those at home and she must use every opportunity to attain the knowledge which would fit her for her chosen path of being a governess. Ellen Nussey, who was not inclined to intellectual interests, felt that Charlotte had almost too much opportunity for her conscientious diligence. Once the set lessons for the day had been accomplished, the girls were free to do as they liked. Charlotte was so quick to learn that she would have had ample time for recreation, but she chose instead to spend her free hours in extra lessons.
She liked the stated task to be over, that she might be free to pursue her self-appointed ones … When her companions were merry round the fire, or otherwise enjoying themselves during the twilight, which was always a precious time of relaxation, she would be kneeling close to the window busy with her studies, and this would last so long that she was accused of seeing in the dark19
Self-improvement was Charlotte’s goal, not only in the formal attainments but in cultivating her tastes.
She always said there was enough of hard practicality and useful knowledge forced on us by necessity, and that the thing most needed was to soften and refine our minds. She picked up every scrap of information concerning painting, sculpture, poetry, music, etc., as if it were gold.20
At Roe Head Charlotte was free to indulge her passion for poetry and the visual arts, though there was no time to spare for her other obsession, the fictional world of Glasstown. The fourteen-year-old Charlotte saw no reason to hide or be ashamed of her family’s absorption in the imaginary worlds of their own creation. She told her school friends all about the monthly issues of the ‘Young Men’s Magazine’ and how they were written in characters to make them look as if they had been printed. She even told the girls a story out of one of them and promised to show the magazines to Mary Taylor – a promise she afterwards retracted and could never be induced to fulfil.21
Charlotte did find some outlet for her highly active imagination, however, and in the process won herself a reputation as a storyteller. On one occasion, she thrilled her audience with the terrifying story of the wanderings of a sleepwalker:
She brought together all the horrors her imagination could create, from surging seas, raging breakers, towering castle walls, high precipices, invisible chasms and dangers. Having wrought these materials to the highest pitch of effect, she brought out, in almost cloud-height, her somnambulist, walking on shaking turrets, – all told in a voice that conveyed more than words alone can express.
So powerful was the effect she created that one girl, who had recently been ill, was reduced to shivering terror; help had to be called for and Charlotte felt so guilty that she refused to tell her frightening stories ever again. After some time and by popular demand, however, she was induced to revert to telling stories after hours in the dormitory – until she and all her listeners were fined by Miss Catherine Wooler for ‘late talking’.22
Charlotte had found a role at the school which enabled the otherwise shy and retiring girl to blossom. When it was decided to enact a ‘coronation performance’ one half-day holiday, Charlotte naturally assumed the organizational role she had always held at home. She drew up the programme, arranged the titles of the performers and wrote both the invitations and the central speech for the coronation:
Powerful Queen! accept this crown, the symbol of dominion, from the hands of your faith
ful and affectionate subjects! And if their earnest and united wishes have any efficacy, you will long be permitted to reign over this peaceful, though circumscribed, empire.23
In such a role Charlotte was in her element: she had, after all, been writing similar speeches for many years and the only difference now was that she had a wider audience than simply her devoted family.
Living too far away to travel home, except for the summer and Christmas holidays, Charlotte was fortunate in that her school-fellows often invited her to their houses for the weekend or short holidays. As most of them were daughters of wealthy manufacturers, their houses were much grander than Haworth Parsonage. The Nusseys lived at The Rydings, an elegant, castellated old house set in landscaped grounds in Birstall. Ellen’s father, John Nussey, had been a wealthy cloth manufacturer, with mills at Birstall Smithies; he had died in 1826 but the business had been continued by his sons. Ellen was the youngest of twelve children: there was a wide disparity in their ages, the oldest being more than twenty years older than Ellen. Life at The Rydings was genteel but busy with all the comings and goings of the vast circle of Nussey friends and relations, who spent their time in paying social visits to one another. Charlotte was welcomed with friendly courtesy and unobtrusive kindness.24
By contrast, Mary Taylor’s family were boisterous and did not stand on ceremony. Mary and her sister, Martha, who was also at Roe Head, were the fourth and fifth of six children, but they were all very close in age and consequently the household was dominated by the young people. Their father, Joshua Taylor, was also a manufacturer and a banker but in the same year that Ellen’s father died he had gone bankrupt as a result of the failure of his own bank in London.25 He spent many years paying back his debts and trying to restore the fortunes of his business. Like his children, he was an ardent Radical and his vociferously expressed beliefs were the absolute antithesis of Charlotte’s High Tory politics. At the Red House, their gracious but unusually brick-built home in Gomersal, Charlotte was drawn into political argument and a defence of her hero the Duke of Wellington:
We used to be furious politicians, as one could hardly help being in 1832. She knew the names of the two Ministries; the one that resigned, and the one that succeeded and passed the Reform Bill. She worshipped the Duke of Wellington, but said that Sir Robert Peel was not to be trusted; he did not act from principle, like the rest, but from expediency. I, being of the furious Radical party, told her, ‘How could any of them trust one another? they were all of them rascals!’ Then she would launch out into praises of the Duke of Wellington, referring to his actions; which I could not contradict, as I knew nothing about him. She said she had taken interest in politics ever since she was five years old. She did not get her opinions from her father – that is, not directly – but from the papers, etc., he preferred … At our house she had just as little chance of a patient hearing, [as at school] for though not schoolgirlish we were more intolerant. We had a rage for practicality, and laughed all poetry to scorn. Neither she nor we had any idea but that our opinions were the opinions of all the sensible people in the world, and we used to astonish each other at every sentence.26
Charlotte’s visits to the Red House and her friendship with Mary Taylor, in particular, were to be stimulating, exciting and constantly surprising
Much less enjoyable were the duty visits Charlotte had to pay to her father’s friends. With the best of intentions, she was occasionally invited over to spend the day with the Franks at the vicarage in Huddersfield or with the Atkinsons at Green House. For Charlotte, these visits were an ordeal. Even the servant sent to fetch her to the Atkinsons’ found her exceedingly shy, timid and shrinking, ‘spare of speech and nice in manners, though somewhat awkward, and evidently observant’.27 On her best behaviour in company and terrified of committing a faux pas among people whom she did not know well, Charlotte found most pleasure in retreating into the garden. One visit to an unnamed family who had known Patrick when he was curate in their parish was particularly mortifying. Charlotte’s shyness and smallness were taken as indications of extreme youth: ‘They took me for a child, and treated me just like one … one tall lady would nurse me.’28 Always hypersensitive to anything that smacked of patronage, Charlotte resented the intended, if misplaced, kindness. Similarly, she clearly felt her own poverty, especially when contrasted with the wealth of her own and her father’s friends. A note to Mrs Franks, written during Charlotte’s first half year to thank her for the present of a frock and muslin and Miss Outhwaite for a shawl, is polite in the extreme but hardly breathes a spirit of genuine appreciation.29 No doubt Mary Taylor and the other girls had mocked her old-fashioned and second-hand clothing as they had her lack of personal good looks. The gifts, meant in kindness, were perceived as charity and served only as a reminder to Charlotte of her inferior status.
Patrick, on the other hand, was grateful for his old friends’ attentions to his daughter and wrote to thank them on her behalf. He also took the opportunity to set the record straight on his own position, which had become increasingly isolated over the last few months. His liberal stance on Roman Catholic Emancipation and, more particularly his campaign to revise the criminal code, had angered many of his former friends, including William Morgan, the Franks and the Outhwaites. His campaign over the winter of 1830 and spring of 1831 for the restoration to the magistracy of Michael Stocks was only marginally less controversial. Stocks, who was a Whig, had been humiliatingly removed from office when charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice; eventually he was to be triumphantly vindicated when his accuser turned out to be a proven liar who was simply seeking revenge on a magistrate who had sentenced him in the past. Patrick, with all the other clergymen of the parish of Bradford, had signed a memorial to the Lord High Chancellor seeking Stocks’ reinstatement as early as December 1830, though the affair dragged on as a party political issue throughout the following year.30
It was Patrick’s support for the Whigs’ Reform Bill of 1831 which most annoyed his High Tory friends. The bill would disenfranchise the rotten boroughs, enfranchise some of the new towns which had grown up since the Industrial Revolution and halve the property qualification for registering as a voter. Once more Patrick had to defend himself against charges of having become an enemy to the establishment.
A warmer, or truer friend – to Church, and state, does not breathe the vital air. But, after many years, mature deliberation, I am fully convinced, that, unless, the real friends of our Excellent Institutions, come forward, and advocate the cause of Temperate reform – the inveterate enemies – will avail themselves of the opportunity, which this circumstance would give them, and will work on the popular feeling – already but too much excited – so as to cause, in all probability, general insurrectionary movements, and bring about a revolution – … Both, then, because, I think moderate, or temperate reform, is wanted – and that this would satisfy all wise & reasonable people, and weaken the hands of our real enemies, & preserve the Church and State from ruin – I am an advocate for the Bill, which has been just thrown out of Parli[a]ment – It is with me, merely an affair of conscience and judgement, and sooner than violate the dictates of either of these, I would run the hazard of poverty, imprisonment, and death.31
It is a measure of the independence of thought Patrick inspired in his children that both Branwell and Charlotte took completely the opposite view on the question of the Reform Bill. A year later, on 17 May 1832, Charlotte addressed her weekly letter home to Branwell, ‘As usual … because to you I find the most to say’.
Lately I had begun to think that I had lost all the interest which I used formerly to take in politics but the extreme pleasure I felt at the news of the Reform-bill’s being thrown out
This particular letter had been preceded by a totally unexpected visit from Branwell, who had arrived at Roe Head
, having walked the twenty-odd miles from Haworth, to visit his sister. He brought news that Aunt Branwell had decided to subscribe to Fraser’s Magazine, which, though less interesting to the children than Blackwood’s, was nevertheless better than nothing. They discussed politics and, almost certainly, Branwell’s progress with the Glasstown saga. His stay, of necessity short, threw Charlotte into such a confusion of excitement that it was only after he had left that she remembered all the questions she had wanted to ask him.33
In Charlotte’s absence, Branwell had been preoccupied with a major retrospective of the establishment and growth of Glasstown, which he entitled ‘The History of the Young Men’. The biggest enterprise yet undertaken in terms of both physical size and imaginative scale, it was finally completed on 7 May 1831, about six weeks before Charlotte came home for the summer holidays.34 The real threat of revolution in England, as the Reform Bill looked likely to be rejected by Parliament, prompted Branwell to tackle two more volumes of his occasional series, ‘Letters from an Englishman’, in June 1831. The first carried James Bellingham away from the Great Glasstown to Wellington’s Glasstown in the African interior, in the company of the Marquis of Douro (Arthur Wellesley), his brother Charles and the poet Young Soult. During their journey they encounter cattle rustlers led by Pigtail, ‘the greatest vender of white bread and Prussian Butter’, stay overnight with a gang of poachers and ‘rare lads’ and are then summoned dramatically back to the Great Glasstown by news that it is on the point of revolution.35 This little book was sabotaged by one of his sisters, possibly Emily, who wrote on the back of the title page in her best schoolgirl French: ‘ma cher frère vous l’avez ecris tres bien je croyais non vraiment vous n’avez pas. Ma foi que vous étes un mauvais garçon et vous serez un choquant homme.’36
Brontës Page 28
