This account raises at least two important questions: why was quiet, gentle, pious Anne in any sort of religious doubt and why was a Moravian minister called in to administer to her?
In her biography of Anne Brontë, Winifred Gérin laid the blame for Anne’s religious sufferings squarely on the shoulders of Aunt Branwell, whom she labelled a staunch Methodist. She depicts her as constitutionally gloomy and of an arid temperament, dogmatically expounding her Methodism as a religion of fear rather than love. This is totally at odds with Ellen Nussey’s picture of the sprightly little woman who had been a belle of the ball in her younger days, teased her prim and proper guest by offering her snuff and tilted arguments against Patrick ‘without fear’.83 Aunt Branwell is the most shadowy of all the members of the Brontë household but to portray her as ruling the young Brontës ‘by a tyranny of the spirit’, subjecting them to a harsh regime of discipline and continually reminding them of their own mortality with threats of hell-fire and damnation, is a travesty. Aunt Branwell, like her sister, Maria Brontë, was brought up as a Wesleyan Methodist. Unlike the more extreme forms of Methodism, which the young Brontës caricatured so mercilessly, the Wesleyans had much in common with Anglicans – so much so, indeed, that when the two congregations finally parted in 1812 many Wesleyans, including Maria Branwell and her uncle, John Fennell, chose to become members of the Established Church. Both Maria and Elizabeth Branwell attended Patrick’s services in the Anglican church and both chose to be buried within its precincts.84 At the very least this implies that Aunt Branwell found the doctrines Patrick preached acceptable. In all probability, then, she shared Patrick’s belief in the essential goodness and infinite mercy of God and hoped, through faith, good works and the intercession of Christ, to win her place in heaven. Even if she did not, it is inconceivable that Patrick would have allowed his sister-in-law to indoctrinate his children with the harsh tenets of Calvinism, with its belief that only the elect few were predestined for salvation.
Although Aunt Branwell undoubtedly had more influence with Anne than with her brother and sisters, having brought her up from being a baby, this is no reason to ascribe Anne’s religious problems to her. It is surely significant that the religious crisis occurred, not at home under Aunt Branwell’s eye, but at school. James LaTrobe described Roe Head as a school ‘where a Christian influence pervaded the establishment and its decided discipline’.85 Two of the five Wooler sisters who had assisted in the running of the school had married local clergymen: Susan had married the Reverend Edward Carter, then curate but now incumbent of Mirfield, on 30 December 1830 and Marianne had married the Reverend Thomas Allbutt, vicar of Dewsbury, on 9 July 1835. Though the Roe Head girls attended Mirfield Church each Sunday,86 because it was nearer, both clergymen seem to have exercised considerable influence over the school. Allbutt, in particular, seems to have been a stickler for discipline who followed the Scriptures to the letter. In 1834, for instance, it was his harsh strictures against dancing, especially between the two sexes, which led Ellen Nussey to seek Charlotte’s opinion on the subject.87 The whole circle of Dewsbury clergymen seems to have been hard-line and unduly censorious in its attitudes: Patrick himself had incurred their disapproval with his liberal views on politics and religion and, much later, Charlotte was to shock them with Jane Eyre.88 With two clergymen virtually on the staff at Roe Head, Patrick’s old friends Thomas Atkinson at Hartshead and James Clarke Franks at Huddersfield and Ellen Nussey’s brother Henry the newly ordained curate of Dewsbury,…89 Anne had an almost embarrassing choice of ministers to call on in her hour of need. The fact that she, an Anglican clergyman’s daughter herself, chose instead to turn to a stranger and a minister of the Moravian church, suggests a rejection of the values of the Dewsbury circle.
What these values were can be inferred from Charlotte’s letters written throughout the time she was a teacher at Roe Head. Charlotte herself also underwent a prolonged religious crisis during these same years and, like Anne, ended up doubting the prospect of her own salvation. Her introspective and highly critical self-examination was shared and encouraged by Ellen, herself a devoted churchwoman, whom Charlotte increasingly saw as a model of genuine piety. ‘My Darling if I were like you I should have my face Zion-ward’, she declared, ‘… but I am not like you. If you knew my thoughts; the dreams that absorb me; and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up and makes me feel Society as it is, wretchedly insipid you would pity and I dare say despise me.’90
How could Charlotte reconcile her idolatry of that eminent sinner, the god-like but adulterous Zamorna, with the precepts of her religion? ‘What am I compared to you’, she asked Ellen, who had never had an original thought and was utterly without poetry or imagination. ‘I feel my own utter worthlessness when I make the comparison. I’m a very coarse, commonplace wretch!’91
Ellen bears a heavy responsibility for encouraging these traits in Charlotte. She was herself of an unusually masochistic turn of mind. From the earliest days of their friendship, she had been constantly self-critical, even seeking a list of her defects from Charlotte. Nor had she hesitated to assess her friend and offer her advice on how to reform her character.92 Then Charlotte had been able to laugh at her but now, eaten up with frustration and resentment because the fulfilment of her duty brought her no personal satisfaction, she was vulnerable. Ellen’s genuine affection for her and frequently offered kindnesses made it all the more difficult to reject her religion. Charlotte therefore accepted all Ellen’s little schemes, such as the plan to pray for each other every night at ten o’clock and the constant measuring themselves against an unattainable goal of Christian perfection. Her sense of self-worth was gradually worn away.
I keep trying to do right, checking wrong feelings, repressing wrong thoughts – but still – every instant I find – myself going astray – I have a constant tendency to scorn people who are far better than I am – A horror at the idea of becoming one of a certain set – a dread lest if I made the slightest profession I should sink at once into ‘Phariseeism’, merge wholly into the ranks of the self-righteous.93
In this increasingly unhealthy state of mind, which her father would certainly have deplored, Charlotte clung even closer to Ellen. Nearly all her letters contain pleas for a visit, and when one was prevented she immediately believed it to be a sign from God: ‘I am not good enough for you, and you must be kept from the contamination of too intimate society.’94 When Ellen announced in February 1837 that she was going on a prolonged visit to her brother John, the court physician, at his new house in Cleveland Row in London, Charlotte was overcome with despair. ‘Why are we to be divided?’ she cried. ‘Surely, Ellen, it must be because we are in danger of loving each other too well – of losing sight of the Creator in idolatry of the creature.’95 Ellen, who shared Charlotte’s new brand of piety without being distressed by it, now found herself the gratified object of Charlotte’s ardent affection.
If I could always live with you and daily read/ the bible with you, if your lips and mine could at the same time, drink the same draught from the same pure fountain of Mercy – I hope, I trust, I might one day become better, far better, than my evil wandering thoughts, my corrupt heart, cold to the spirit, and warm to the flesh will now permit me to be. I often plan the pleasant life which we might lead to-gether, strengthening each other in that power of self-denial, that hallowed and glowing devotion, which the first Saints of God often attained to – My eyes fill with tears when I contrast the bliss of such a state brightened by hopes of the future with the melancholy state I now live in, uncertain that I have ever felt true contrition, wandering in thought and deed, longing for holiness which I shall never, never obtain – smitten at times to the heart with the conviction that your Ghastly Calvinistic doctrines are true – darkened in short by the very shadows of Spiritual Death!96
The last sentence of this passage contains the key to Charlotte’s religious crisis: her desperate yearning to achieve that perfection of faith which would ensure
her salvation, undermined by the fear that the battle was already useless if she was not predestined for salvation or had been cast off by God because she was a hardened sinner. These were what her own father called ‘the appaling doctrines of personal Election and Reprobation’.97 That the pious and conventional Ellen, her greatest friend and probably closest confidante, espoused these Calvinist beliefs must have shaken Charlotte’s faith to its core. Ellen herself was not one to branch out into new ideas or think very deeply, so it is reasonable to infer that she had adopted her Calvinism from the clergymen who taught her from the local pulpits. Her own brother the Reverend Henry Nussey held his curacy at Dewsbury almost exactly contemporaneously with the Brontës’ residence at Roe Head. He had taken up the post in September 1835 and, although he performed his last official duty as curate on 24 July 1837, he continued to take the occasional duty there until the following December – precisely the time of Anne’s illness.98 It is extremely unlikely that Thomas Allbutt would have employed a curate whose beliefs differed fundamentally from his own, so it can be assumed that he too shared at least some of the Calvinist beliefs which so distressed Charlotte. ‘I abhor myself–’, she told Ellen in another letter, ‘I despise myself – if the Doctrine of Calvin be true I am already an outcast.’99 These sentiments would appear to be precisely those that troubled Anne. James La Trobe perceived her problem as being that she saw the ‘main truths of the Bible respecting our salvation … more through the law than the gospel, more as a requirement from God than His gift in His Son’.100 This, in itself, was a virtual definition of Calvinism.
At Roe Head both Anne and Charlotte, particularly the latter, were exposed to a double dose of Calvinism: from the pulpit of the Dewsbury circle of clergymen and, more insidiously, through Ellen Nussey. It is not surprising that both sisters underwent a religious crisis. What is surprising, and is perhaps a reflection of the influence Ellen had gained over Charlotte’s mind at this time, is that, despite their supposed closeness, the sisters appear to have been unaware that they shared the same doubts.
It is ironic, though it was also fortunate, that Anne had turned to a Moravian minister for succour, when her own father was such a hostile opponent of Calvinism. Had she been at home, he would undoubtedly have dispelled her fears at once, but away at school Anne had no confidante and no comforter. Charlotte, the natural person to turn to, was herself in no state to advise her. In any case, she seems to have virtually ignored Anne at Roe Head. Charlotte always regarded Anne as a baby sister and was continually surprised when she showed any sign of adult behaviour or feelings, so Anne might not have expected a sympathetic hearing from her. Among her fellow pupils there was no one she could talk to: even Ann Cook was too young to be made a confidante of doubts of this kind.
Once at home and safely removed from the stern moral climate of Roe Head, Anne recovered rapidly from her physical illness. She did not shed her religious depression so easily, for although she eventually became convinced that salvation was open to all through the merits and passion of Christ,101 a streak of melancholy and sense of personal worthlessness ran through all her religious poetry thereafter. Anne’s experience at Roe Head, though not a direct result of the school itself, was to leave as profound a mark upon her character as Charlotte’s much earlier experience at Cowan Bridge.
Chapter Eleven
SLAVERY
For the second Christmas in a row, the Brontës had an invalid in their household to nurse back to health. Tabby, though left with a pronounced limp, was fully active about the house again. But Anne’s delicate state of health was a cause of concern, so much so that it was decided she should not return to Roe Head at the beginning of the new term in 1838. Charlotte would return alone to resume her teaching duties with Miss Wooler.
Charlotte spent her holiday, as usual, in writing an Angrian story which she completed on Anne’s eighteenth birthday, 17 January. Though effectively only an episode, the story was unusually well thought out, with all its incidents closely interwoven to form a single drama. Just as a heroine, Mary Percy, had inspired one of her earlier best efforts, Mina Laury caught Charlotte’s imagination this time. Though Charlotte had not yet recognized the fact, it was already becoming apparent that her forte lay with female characters, rather than her preferred male personae, from Zamorna himself to Charles Townshend. The story combines the tale of Lord Hartford’s unrequited love for Zamorna’s mistress, Mina Laury, with an escapade in which Zamorna lies his way out of a compromising position when his wife catches him visiting his mistress. Interestingly, Hartford’s feelings and sufferings are described much more acutely and realistically than Mina Laury’s unpleasantly servile devotion to Zamorna. Mina, like Charlotte herself, suffered from Zamorna-blindness:
Miss Laury belonged to the Duke of Zamorna – She was indisputably his property as much as the Lodge of Rivaux or the stately woods of Hawkscliffe … She had but one idea – Zamorna, Zamorna –! it had grown up with her – become a part of her nature – Absence – Coldness – total neglect – for long periods together – went for nothing – she could no more feel alienation from him than she could from herself.1
It is a sign of how far Charlotte and Branwell had already drifted apart that, for a second time, she defied him by reviving Mary Percy, Zamorna’s wife. This time she made no attempt to explain away the fact that Branwell had definitively killed her off over a year before, but simply stuck to her own version of events in which Mary had recovered from her illness with the return of Zamorna.2
The day before she left home, Charlotte wrote a poem to rally her own and her family’s spirits.
There’s no use in weeping,
Though we are condemned to part;
There’s such a thing as keeping
A remembrance in one’s heart …
We can burst the bonds which chain us,
Which cold human hands have wrought
And where none shall dare restrain us
We can meet again, in thought.3
On 30 January 1838, Charlotte set off from Haworth through some of the worst weather the winter had yet seen, heavy snows having fallen continuously throughout the week on top of ground already frozen hard.4 It is possible that she returned, not to Roe Head but to a much smaller house where the Misses Wooler removed the school some time before Easter of that year. Roe Head had only been taken on a lease and the small number of boarding pupils at the school must have made it difficult to justify the expense of such a large house with its huge grounds. Miss Wooler’s own family circumstances were changing: her father, who lived in Dewsbury at the family home, Rouse Mill, had been ill for some time and she was increasingly called upon to visit him. A house nearer Dewsbury therefore seemed a sensible idea.
Exactly when the move took place is not known. The Christmas holiday seems the most likely time, as it would have been complicated to move during term-time. The school had certainly relocated by the Easter holidays, when Mr Wooler actually died.5 Heald’s House, at Dewsbury Moor, was a very different, though no less attractive building, some three or four miles away from Roe Head. A pleasant, low-built, two-storey eighteenth-century gentleman’s house of red brick, it had belonged to the Reverend William Margetson Heald, vicar of Birstall. It stood on a hill above the town of Dewsbury, well out of the range of the smoke of the mills, surrounded by ample gardens. Today, the area has been heavily built up and the house is overshadowed by the ugly utilitarian blocks of Dewsbury Hospital, but even so it retains an air of shabby gentility in the quiet backwater of a wide and leafy street. Though it is on a less high and exposed site than Roe Head, it is difficult to see why Mrs Gaskell considered the situation ‘low and damp’ and the air conducive to bad health.6 In all probability it was her explanation for the fact that Charlotte fell ill at Heald’s House. This was not the result of the relocation of the school, but rather an almost inevitable breakdown caused by Charlotte’s overwrought state of mind. The monotony and sheer grind of the daily routine undermined her physical hea
lth, while her frustration and gloomy religious outlook poisoned her spirits. Added to this was an increasing sense of isolation. Anne, however little contact she had had with her while she had been at school, was now at home. Ellen was still in London, so Charlotte no longer had the prospect of her visits to enliven the dull round of teaching Even Miss Wooler was no longer a constant companion. On one occasion during the Easter holidays, when she should have been at home but had been recalled to take charge after Mr Wooler’s death, Charlotte was left completely on her own for sixteen days in a row.7 The solitary life did not agree with her; she soon became prey to morbid thoughts and what she herself called ‘hypochondria’. Many years later, she looked back on this period with anguish, recalling ‘the tyranny of Hypochondria’ and telling Miss Wooler:
I endured it but a year – and assuredly I can never forget the concentrated anguish of certain insufferable moments and the heavy gloom of many long hours – besides the preternatural horror which seemed to clothe existence and Nature – and which made Life a continual waking Night-mare – Under such circumstances the morbid Nerves can know neither peace nor enjoyment – whatever touches – pierces them – sensation for them is all suffering – A weary burden nervous patients consequently become to those about them – they know this and it infuses a new gall – corrosive in its extreme acritude, into their bitter cup – When I was at Dewsbury-Moor – I could have been no better company for you than a stalking ghost – and I remember I felt my incapacity to
The long period on her own seems to have brought Charlotte to breaking point. Within a few weeks she had given up the unequal battle, writing to Ellen Nussey on 9 June 1838:
Brontës Page 44
