Like Charlotte, Emily took refuge from the harsh realities and fatigue of the daily grind in poetry. The large number of poems she wrote in the three months of her first term suggests that, despite the length of the hours she had to work, she still found leisure for her own writing. As some of the poems are dramatic incidents in the Gondal saga, such as the suicide of Ferdinand de Samara, who has been deceived and abandoned by his former lover, Augusta Almeda,32 it is even possible that Emily was able to spend time on her prose tales while at Law Hill. Gondal was certainly not forgotten, nor put to one side. In this autumn of 1838 she also wrote three outstanding poems which expressed her personal misery and homesickness. The most clearly autobiographical of these, written on 4 December 1838, is worth quoting in full because it so exquisitely encapsulates Emily’s dilemma: would a snatched hour of leisure be better spent in dreams of her beloved home, graphically described even to the path overgrown with weeds, or of Gondal, that ‘other clime’?
A little while, a little while
The noisy crowd are barred away;
And I can sing and I can smile –
A little while I’ve holyday!
Where wilt thou go my harassed heart?
Full many a land invites thee now;
And places near, and far apart
Have rest for thee, my weary brow –
There is a spot mid barren hills
Where winter howls and driving rain
But if the dreary tempest chills
There is a light that warms again
The house is old, the trees are bare
And moonless bends the misty dome
But what on earth is half so dear –
So longed for as the hearth of home?
The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dank moss
The garden-walk with weeds o’e’r-grown
I love them – how I love them all!
Shall I go there? or shall I seek
Another clime, another sky –
Where tongues familiar music speak
In accents dear to memory?
Yes, as I mused, the naked room,
The flickering firelight died away
And from the midst of cheerless gloom
I passed to bright, unclouded day –
A little and a lone green lane
That opened on a common wide
A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain
Of mountains circling every side –
A heaven so clear, an earth so calm,
So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air
And, deepening still the dreamlike charm,
Wild moor sheep feeding everywhere –
That was the scene – I knew it well
I knew the pathways far and near
That winding o’er each billowy swell –
Marked out the tracks of wandering deer
Could I have lingered but an hour
It well had paid a week of toil
But truth has banished fancys power
I hear my dungeon bars recoil –
Even as I stood with raptured eye
Absorbed in bliss so deep and dear
My hour of rest had fleeted by
And given me back to weary care—33
Both the other poems, written in the gloom and snow of November and December at Law Hill, yearned for the transformation that spring and summer would bring to the moors.
For the moors, for the moors where the short grass
Like velvet beneath us should lie!
For the moors, for the moors where each high pass
Rose sunny against the clear sky!
For the moors, where the linnet was trilling
Its song on the old granite stone –
Where the lark – the wild sky-lark was filling
Every breast with delight like its own –34
The third poem, written just before Emily’s return home for the Christmas holidays, was an elegy for the harebell, whose delicate flower breathes ‘a calm and softening spell’, soothing as well as stirring up her longing for the return of summer.35 Even if being away from home did little for Emily’s spirits, it was clearly a stimulus to poetic impulse, as the poems she produced this autumn included some of the best she ever wrote.
The family reunited for the Christmas holidays at the end of 1838, but joy at being home was mixed with concern at Patrick’s evidently deteriorating state of health. He had been under considerable stress all year. The annual battle over church rates had been fought and lost but this time the confrontation had been taken a stage further. James Greenwood, the most prominent and well-respected of the Haworth Dissenters, had been prosecuted for refusing to pay his Bradford church rate. As he was also Chief Constable of Haworth, responsible for much of the parish administration, relations between him and Patrick must have been strained. When Greenwood pleaded that the rate had been levied illegally, the magistrates declared they had no jurisdiction in the matter and ‘wished the parties joy of the ecclesiastical courts’. A number of other people in the chapelry were later successfully prosecuted for failure to pay their tithes, a move which can only have further alienated the Dissenters.36
In the autumn of 1838 Patrick was driven to consult the up and coming young surgeon from Keighley, John Milligan, about his dyspepsia. Milligan apparently recommended a glass of wine or spirits should be taken with his main meal, a prescription which Patrick found effective but open to misinterpretation. One could well imagine the gleeful reaction of John Winterbotham to news that the rector, one of the founder members of the Haworth Temperance Society, was to be seen imbibing wine. For this reason, Patrick was careful to get Milligan’s signature to the prescription, but even that did not quash rumours that the parson had taken to the bottle.37
The strain he was under also prompted Patrick to initiate a more vigorous search for a new curate. On 10 January 1839 he wrote to several of his clergyman friends, including James Clarke Franks, requesting them to exert themselves on his behalf. ‘I am no Bigot—’ he told Franks, but he did not want a Calvinist.
Yet, I could not feel comfortable with a coadjutor, who would deem it his duty to preach the appaling Doctrines of Personal Election and Reprobation. As I should consider these, decidedly derogatory to the Attributes of God – so, also I should be fearful of evil consequences to the hearers, from the enforcement of final perseverance, as an essential Article of belief… I want, for this region, a plain, rather than an able preacher; a zealous, hut at the same time a judicious man – One, not fond of innovation, but desirous of proceeding on the good Old Plan – which, alas! has often been mar’d, but never improved.38
Whether Patrick wished it or not, major changes were on the horizon. On 17 January 1839, Henry Heap, vicar of Bradford for the last twenty-two years, died after a long illness.39 Taking advantage of this situation, the Bishop of Ripon announced that he intended to separate the chapelry of Haworth from Bradford and make it a parish in its own right. Though the proposal was widely welcomed in Haworth, where it would have ended at a stroke the injustice of the township having to pay two sets of church rates and dues, it met with fierce opposition in Bradford. The Simeon trustees (who included the Reverend William Carus Wilson) had just purchased the right to appoint the new vicar and argued that the next incumbent would lose a fifth of his income if Haworth was separated from Bradford. In the meantime, the trustees found themselves with the difficult task of trying to appoint a vicar in a parish where his rights would undoubtedly be challenged in every quarter.40
Patrick at least had the comfort of learning from Branwell and Emily that they were both doing as well as could be expected in their first employment. The shock must therefore have been all the greater when Charlotte announced that she had finally given her notice to Miss Wooler and would not be returning to Dewsbury Moor after the Christmas holidays. As she had been on the brink of giving up at least twice before, her family might have thought that this wa
s simply another futile gesture, but Charlotte stuck to her resolve. Though ill health does not seem to have played its part this time, Charlotte was at the limit of her endurance. In addition to her teaching duties she had found herself called upon to play nursemaid to little Edward Carter and his baby sister, Miss Wooler’s nephew and niece.41 The main catalyst, however, seems to have been Miss Wooler’s declared intention of giving up the school at Christmas in favour of her sister, Eliza. The sense of personal obligation and friendship for Miss Wooler herself, which had kept Charlotte at Dewsbury Moor for so long, was removed. She owed no such duties to Eliza Wooler. Another reason was that although Miss Wooler intended to continue living in Heald’s House, she would also have her own, recently widowed, mother in residence. No doubt Charlotte foresaw that she would be increasingly called upon to give up her precious hours of leisure to the uncongenial task of looking after all the elderly and juvenile members of the extensive Wooler family.42 Charlotte had therefore taken a formal leave of all her acquaintance in the Dewsbury area and, having done the deed, returned to Haworth in an unusually bright and cheerful frame of mind.
Writing on 20 January 1839 to Ellen Nussey, who had at long last returned from Bath, Charlotte had so far recovered her spirits as to be able to tease her friend.
My dear, kind Ellen
I can hardly help laughing when I reckon up the number of urgent invitations I have received from you during the last three months – had I accepted all, or even half of them – the Birstallians would certainly have concluded that I had come to make Brookroyd my permanent residence – When you set your mind upon a thing you have a peculiar way of hedging one in with a circle of dilemmas so that they hardly know how to refuse you – however I shall take a running leap and clear them all – Frankly my dear Ellen I cannot come – Reflect for yourself a moment – do you see nothing absurd in the idea of a person Coming again into a neighbourhood within a month after they have taken a solemn and formal leave of all their acquaintance –?… Angry though you are I will venture to sign myself as usual – (no not as usual, but as suits circumstances)
Yours under a cloud
C Brontë43
Charlotte’s gaiety at her release from Dewsbury Moor was reflected in her plans. The day after she wrote her letter, she was due to go to Lascelles Hall on a visit to Amelia Walker – a treat which she regarded with mixed feelings. Something she could look forward to with unmixed pleasure was a visit to Haworth by Mary and Martha Taylor in February, which Charlotte tried to improve further by urging Ellen to join them as well.44
Charlotte now also had the time to gratify her writing instincts to the full, an opportunity of which she took advantage in an Angrian story of unusual length. Apart from the usual inconsequential and irrelevant forays into Zamorna’s domestic life, her story was principally concerned with a new heroine, sister of Branwell’s creation Henry Hastings, the Angrian soldier and writer turned debauched and disgraced outlaw.45 As so often in the past, Charlotte’s story was sparked off by a story Branwell was writing about the efforts of Zamorna’s men to round up all the proscribed rebels who had aided Northangerland. Hastings had been reduced to leading sorties of Ashantee and French troops against the Angrians and then, in desperation, had come to Verdopolis in disguise as a ‘Richard Wilson’ to attempt an assassination of Zamorna. Though the attempt failed, news of Zamorna’s ‘death’ had been spread by the French before anyone became aware of the attempt on his life. Their complicity in the assassination plot was therefore obvious, though the populace continued to blame Northangerland.46
Charlotte’s story picked up this theme from the point of view of Elizabeth Hastings, his loyal sister, who sheltered him while he was on the run, tried to prevent his capture by Sir William Percy and, when he was captured and condemned to death for the assassination attempt, interceded on his behalf with the Duchess of Zamorna. For the first and last time in many years, Charlotte and Branwell were working on the same story at the same time.
Charlotte’s story is interesting chiefly because its central character is not a languorous aristocratic Angrian beauty or an infatuated mistress of Zamorna but a much more life-like and original character who is a forerunner of Jane Eyre. Like Jane, and Charlotte herself, Elizabeth Hastings is physically small and insignificant: Townshend calls her a ‘pale undersized young woman dressed as plainly as a Quakeress in grey.’ The plain exterior belied a loyal soul and a lively wit. When quizzed by Townshend as to why she does not fall into raptures at the very name of Zamorna, she replies, ‘I make a point of never speaking in raptures, especially in a stagecoach.’47
Just as she was later to do with Jane Eyre, Charlotte endowed Elizabeth with many of her own characteristics. Elizabeth, for example, feels very deeply her own lack of personal attraction. In the presence of the acknowledged beauty Mary Percy, Duchess of Zamorna, she experiences ‘a new feeling – & her heart confessed, as it had a thousand times done before, the Dazzling omnipotence of beauty – the Degradation of personal insignificance’.48 One hears also Charlotte’s own voice in Elizabeth’s decision to set up her own school for older girls,
not wearily toiling to impart the dry rudiments of knowledge to yawning, obstinate children – a thing she hated & for which her sharp-irritable temper rendered her wholly unfit – but instructing those who had already mastered the elements of education – reading, commenting, explaining, leaving it to them to listen – if they failed, comfortably conscious that the blame would rest on her pupils, not herself.49
Like Charlotte, too, Elizabeth longed for love. Though she becomes respected and admired for her diligence and success in establishing her school,
still the exclusive proud being thought she had not met with a single individual equal to herself in mind, & therefore not one whom she could love … She was always burning for warmer, closer attachment – she couldn’t live without it – but the feeling never woke & never was reciprocated –50
When eventually she does fall in love, with William Percy, she is as arch and pert with him as Jane was to be with Mr Rochester. When he seeks compliments, she provokes him by not replying, simply looking down and smiling. And when, like Rochester, he proposes to make her his mistress, she refuses not just because she fears the world’s opinion but because she has respect for herself. Though her very soul cries out to give in to his pleas, she answers him, ‘I could not without incurring the miseries of self-hatred.’ She leaves him, thinking it to be for ever, with the words ‘If I stay another moment God knows what I shall say or do … Good-bye Sir William – I implore you not to follow me – the night is light – I am afraid of nothing but myself.’51
The story, which was originally written in three volumes, took Charlotte a full month to complete. It proved once again that her obsession with Zamorna was a major handicap: if she could only shake off his shackles she was capable of creating a spirited and lively heroine and developing a dramatic storyline.
Charlotte began this story with two people both searching for love, William Percy looking for a woman in whom mind and feeling predominated and Elizabeth Hastings for her own equal in intellect and passion. It was therefore a curious coincidence that Charlotte herself was offered love, of a sort, at the very same time. At the beginning of March 1839, she received a marriage proposal out of the blue. The Reverend Henry Nussey, Ellen’s brother, the former curate of Dewsbury, was now settled in a new curacy at Donnington in Sussex and, at twenty-seven years of age, had decided that it was time he should marry. He set about finding a bride with characteristic coolness and efficiency. The first young lady he approached was Mary Lutwidge, the sister of his former vicar, whom he described in his diary as ‘a steady, intelligent, sensible, and, I trust, good girl’. That these were her sole attractions and that his own affections were not at all engaged was obvious from his response to her refusal: ‘received a decisive reply fm M. A. L.’s papa. A loss, but I trust a providential one. Believe not her will, but her father’s. All right. God knows best what
is good for us, for his Church, & for his own Glory … Wrote to a Yorkse friend, C. B. Brothers John & George also’.52
Though Henry’s proposal to Charlotte is not extant, we have Charlotte’s own summary of it in a letter she wrote to his sister on 12 March.
You ask me my dear Ellen whether I have received a letter from Henry – I have about a week since – The Contents I confess did a little surprise me, but I kept them to myself, and unless you had questioned me on the subject I would never have adverted to it – Henry says he is comfortably settled at
The unromantic nature of the proposal appealed to Charlotte’s sense of honesty and there were positive advantages to accepting. She would no longer have to worry about provision for her future. She could forget the idea of having to return to the dreary round of teaching and look forward to the prospect of conducting her own school, safe in the knowledge that her husband could support her financially. Henry was a perfectly eligible bachelor, four years older than herself and a clergyman in her own church. The thought that Ellen could come and live with them was also a ‘strong temptation’ – had she not once told Ellen how she longed ‘for a cottage and a competency of our own’ so that they could live together without being dependent on anyone else for their happiness?54 The problem was that Charlotte, like Elizabeth Hastings and Jane Eyre, had the romantic notion that she should love her husband. ‘I asked myself two questions –’, Charlotte told Ellen.
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