Brontës

by Juliet Barker

  Day and night I find neither rest nor peace – if I sleep I have tortured dreams in which I see you always severe, always gloomy and annoyed with me –

  Forgive me then Monsieur if I take the course of writing to you again – How can I endure life if I make no effort to alleviate my sufferings?

  I know that you will be impatient when you read this letter – you will say again that I am over-excited – that I have black thoughts &c. It may be so Monsieur – I do not seek to justify myself, I submit to every kind of reproach – all I know – is that I cannot – that I will not resign myself to lose the friendship of my master completely – I would rather undergo the greatest physical sufferings than always have my heart torn apart by bitter regrets.

  If my master withdraws his friendship entirely from me I will be completely without hope – if he gives me a little – very little – I will be content – happy, I will have a reason for living – for working –

  Monsieur, the poor do not need much to live – they only ask for the crumbs of bread which fall from the rich man’s table – but if one refuses them these crumbs of bread – they die of hunger – Nor do I need much affection from those I love – I would not know what to do with an absolute and complete friendship – I am not used to such a thing – but you once showed me a little interest when I was your pupil in Brussels – and I cling on to preserving that little interest – I cling on to it as I cling to life.9

  One cannot but feel sorry for Monsieur Heger, a married man whose character and morals were above reproach. If he replied to his highly-strung former pupil, it merely encouraged her to write again. If he did not reply, in the hope that she might forget him, she brooded on his supposed neglect and became even more hysterical and obsessive. His own letters to her, infrequent as they seem to have been, contained nothing more than kindly advice about her character, her studies and her mode of life. He clearly had nothing to be ashamed of in his side of the correspondence, actually encouraging Mrs Gaskell to search for his own letters, which he was sure Charlotte would have preserved.10

  Fortunately for Charlotte, Monsieur Heger was no Zamorna; he had no wish to take advantage of her passion for him. Even after she was dead and rumours about him were rife, he refused to allow publication of Charlotte’s letters to him as he had no wish to harm her reputation.11 In them, Charlotte showed all the servile and self-debasing devotion which her heroine, Mina Laury, had once displayed for Zamorna. Unlike Jane Eyre, Charlotte had no wish to be Monsieur Heger’s equal: she wanted to be his inferior – even his slave – and she took a masochistic pleasure in desiring his dominance over her. Her poetry at this time also explored this type of relationship and, in at least one instance, seems to have drawn directly on her own experience.

  At first I did attention give

  Observance – deep esteem

  His frown I failed not to forgive

  His smile – a boon to deem

  Attention rose to interest soon

  Respect to homage changed

  The smile became a valued boon

  The frown like grief estranged

  The interest ceased not with his voice

  The homage tracked him near

  Obedience was my heart’s free choice

  Whatere his word severe

  His praise unfrequent – favour rare

  Unduly precious grew

  And too much power – a haunting fear

  Around his anger threw –

  His coming was my hope each day

  His parting was my pain!

  The chance that did his steps delay

  Was ice in every vein

  I gave entire affection now

  I gave devotion sure

  And strongly took root and fast did grow

  One mighty feeling more

  The truest love that ever heart

  Felt at its kindled core

  Through every vein with quickened start

  A tide of life did pour12

  It was not as if Charlotte did not have distractions to divert her from her unhealthy obsession. In the new year Mary Taylor came to stay for a few days at Haworth,13 a visit which Charlotte returned in February. After Mr Taylor’s death the family had moved from Red House to the rather less salubrious Hunsworth House, which was right next to the Taylor mills in Cleckheaton. The visit had a sad purpose. After many delays and changes of plan, Mary had at last determined to emigrate to New Zealand with her brother. The imminent departure of one of her closest friends to the other side of the world did nothing to lift Charlotte’s gloom. On her return she wrote to Ellen Nussey who was in Bridlington, nursing her brother George.

  I spent a week at Hunsworth not very pleasantly; headache, sickliness, and flatness of spirits made me a poor companion, a sad drag on the vivacious and loquacious gaiety of all the other inmates of the house. I never was fortunate enough to be able to rally, for so much as a single hour, while I was there. I am sure all, with the exception perhaps of Mary, were very glad when I took my departure.14

  Mary, with typical forthrightness, had tried to tackle Charlotte about her depression and lack of motivation for the future which contrasted so strongly with her own ability to determine her fate. She described to Mrs Gaskell how they had talked over what Charlotte should do:

  she told me she had quite decided to stay at home. She owned she did not like it. Her health was weak. She said she would like any change at first, as she had liked Brussels at first, and she thought that there must be some possibility for some people of having a life of more variety and more communion with human kind, but she saw none for her. I told her very warmly that she ought not to stay at home, that to spend the next five years at home, in solitude and weak health, would ruin her; that she would never recover it. Such a dark shadow came over her face when I said ‘Think of what you’ll be five years hence!’ that I stopped, and said, ‘Don’t cry, Charlotte!’ She did not cry, but went on walking up and down the room, and said in a little while, ‘But I intend to stay, Polly’.15

  Charlotte was well aware of her failings at this time, telling Ellen, ‘I begin to perceive that I have too little life in me, nowadays, to be fit company for any except very quiet people. Is it age, or what else, that changes one so?’16 Even Joe Taylor fell victim to her increasingly bitter state of mind.

  I saw his lordship in a new light last time I was at Hunsworth – sometimes I could scarcely believe my ears when I heard the stress he laid on wealth – Appearance Family – and all those advantages which are the acknowledged idols of the world – His conversation on Marriage – (and he talked much about it) differed in no degree from that of any hackneyed Fortune-Hunter – except that with his own peculiar and native audacity he avowed views & principles which more timid individuals conceal. Of course I raised no argument against anything he said I listened and laughed inwardly to think how indignant I should have been 8 years since if any one had accused Joe Taylor of being a worshipper of Mam [m] on and of Interest. Indeed I still believe that the Joe Taylor of 10 years ago – is not the Joe Taylor of to-day – The world with its hardness and selfishness has utterly changed him – He thinks himself grown wiser than the wisest – in a worldly sense he is wise his feelings have gone through a process of petrification which will prevent them from ever warring against his interest – but Ichabod! all glory of principle and much elevation of character is gone!17

  Ellen’s account of having mistaken a bachelor doctor in Bridlington for a married man and therefore having treated him with unwonted civility also made Charlotte consider the changes that time had wrought upon her. Ten years ago she would have laughed heartily at the tale and wondered how Ellen could possibly regret having been civil to a decent individual merely because he was unmarried. Now, however, she was able to see the commonsense behind such protocol. If women wished to avoid the stigma of husband-seeking,

  they must act & look like marble or clay – cold – expressionless, bloodless – for every appearance of feeling of joy �
� sorrow – friendliness, antipathy, admiration – disgust are alike construed by the world into an attempt to hook in a husband –18

  If she truly believed this, one can only wonder what Charlotte thought she was doing in writing her impassioned letters to Monsieur Heger.

  Charlotte’s condemnation of the worldly attitude of her friends and society in general at this time seems to have owed at least something to her own obsession with money, or rather the lack of it. Mary Taylor, with her usual acute perceptiveness, was well aware that most of Charlotte’s problems stemmed from her financial straits, describing her life as a ‘waking nightmare of “poverty and self-suppression”’. She herself had frequently urged on Charlotte the importance of earning money. ‘It seems to me hard indeed that you who would succeed better than anyone in making friends and keeping them should be condemned to solitude from you[r] poverty’, Mary would write in 1850.

  To no one would money bring more happiness, for no one would use it better than you would. – For me with my headlong self-indulgent habits I am perhaps better without it, but I am convinced it would give you great and noble pleasures. Look out then for success in writing. You ought to care as much for that as you do for going to Heaven.19

  In Brussels Charlotte had encountered a terrifying vision of her own possible future: a teacher, ten years older than herself, who used her male relatives to bear notes to unmarried men in the hope that one of them could be persuaded to marry her and save her from becoming a sister of charity if and when her present employment failed. Mary had then attempted to comfort her.

  I promised her a better destiny than to go begging any one to marry her, or to lose her natural feelings as a sister of charity. She said, ‘My youth is leaving me; I can never do better than I have done, and I have done nothing yet.’ At such times she seemed to think that most human beings were destined by the pressure of worldly interests to lose one faculty and feeling after another ‘till they went dead altogether. I hope I shall be put in my grave as soon as I’m dead; I don’t want to walk about so.’ Here we always differed! I thought the degradation of nature she feared was a consequence of poverty, and that she should give her attention to earning money. Sometimes she admitted this, but could find no means of earning money. At others she seemed afraid of letting her thoughts dwell on the subject, saying it brought on the worst palsy of all. Indeed, in her position, nothing less than entire constant absorption in petty money matters could have scraped together a provision … She used very inconsistently to rail at money and money-getting, and then wish she was able to visit all the large towns in Europe, see all the sights, and know all the celebrities.20

  The whole concept of the Brontës’ poverty has been greatly exaggerated, as much by Mary Taylor and Mrs Gaskell as by Charlotte herself. Her education and inclination both led her to want a life of leisured luxury in which she could pursue her reading and writing at will. The necessity of earning her own living thus produced a gnawing resentment which had poisoned her relations with her employers in the past and embittered her future prospects. She seems to have been unable to appreciate the advantages she had, including that of a comfortable home. By comparison with most of her father’s parishioners, the Brontës enjoyed enormous wealth; in contrast to their homes, where large families of six, seven or more lived cramped in one or two rooms, the parsonage must have seemed a palace. Patrick’s income, too, though not large in the general scale of clergy earnings, was at least three or four times that of the majority of his parishioners and, unlike theirs, it was secure and not dependent on the vagaries of trade.

  The sort of wealth which Charlotte wanted would have given her the leisure and financial freedom to indulge her artistic preferences and travel widely: unless she married a man with a fortune, it was out of the question. Her prospects of marriage were also fast receding with each passing year. An actuaries’ table, published in the local press some five years earlier, had pointed out that two-thirds of women who did marry had done so before the age of twenty-five. By the age of thirty, this figure had risen to eighty-five per cent so that the chances of marrying later in life were extraordinarily slim.21 By these calculations, even Anne, the youngest Brontë, had passed the age at which she was likeliest to marry, and all three sisters were faced with almost certain spinsterhood.

  Charlotte’s preoccupation with money and future financial security was not therefore entirely unjustified, even if her inclinations were at odds with her earning capabilities. On 23 April, just two days after her twenty-ninth birthday, she wrote to Miss Wooler to thank her for her advice on purchasing an annuity. She and Emily had written to Miss Wooler’s contact but he could only offer them a four and a half per cent return on their capital invested at the age of twenty-five, rising to five per cent if invested at the age of thirty. As none of the sisters had yet reached thirty, they decided to defer the decision on transferring their small capital for a year. Then they could decide whether to go for a five per cent annuity or purchase one which would give them an annual return of ten per cent if the paying out of the annuity was deferred for a further twelve years. Despite the greater reward, as Charlotte appreciated, this would be to take a huge risk, tying up their finances without return until each of them was forty-two years old. With favourable circumstances and moderate economy, they would be able to save the difference out of the interest.22 For the moment, then, the sisters’ money remained where it was, in the original investments Aunt Branwell had made in the York and North Midland Railway and the Reeth Consolidated Mining Company.

  Probably by default, in the absence of her sisters in Brussels and at Thorp Green, Emily had assumed responsibility for managing their small inheritance. Charlotte told Miss Wooler:

  Emily has made herself mistress of the necessary degree of knowledge for conducting the matter, by dint of carefully reading every paragraph & every advertisement in the news-papers that related to rail-roads and as we have abstained from all gambling, all mere/ speculative buying-in & selling-out – we have got on very decently.23

  This praise for Emily’s handling of the investment is often taken as evidence of her financial acumen, particularly as she was able to boast of a ‘degree of success’ in the unstable and uncertain boom-and-bust market of railway shares. However, Emily’s management seems to have consisted solely in leaving the money where it was; she made no attempt to spread the investment or put money into new ventures or different companies. By the time she and Anne died, their capital was still invested exactly as it had been when Aunt Branwell first left it to them.24

  Charlotte was increasingly discontented with her present lot. Mary Taylor had sailed for her great adventure in New Zealand in March; even Ellen was away in Bridlington and shortly to go to Hathersage. Only Charlotte remained stranded at home, feeling herself imprisoned in Haworth. Despite all that the locality had to offer in the way of music and lectures, it could not compete with the imagined glories and glamour of travel. Charlotte was left to contrast her friends’ experiences with her own increasingly miserable existence.

  I can hardly tell you how time gets on here at Haworth – There is no event whatever to mark its progress – one day resembles another – and all have heavy lifeless physiognomies – Sunday – baking day & Saturday are the only ones that bear the slightest distinctive mark – meantime life wears away – I shall soon be 30 – and I have done nothing yet – Sometimes I get melancholy – at the prospect before and behind me – yet it is wrong and foolish to repine – and undoubtedly my Duty directs me to stay at home for the present – There was a time when Haworth was a very pleasant place to me, it is not so now – I feel as if we were all buried here – I long to travel – to work to live a life of action –25

  She was even contemplating the possibility of going to Paris as a governess, the glamour of the situation outweighing the drudgery of the employmeant.26

  The opportunity to get out of Haworth, at least temporarily, soon presented itself. Ellen invited Charlotte to join her at Hat
hersage, a small village in the Derbyshire Peak District, not far from Sheffield, where she was supervising alterations to the vicarage in preparation for her brother Henry’s forthcoming marriage to Emily Prescott. Henry had at last found a bride who fitted his criteria, including that of possessing a small fortune. Once the marriage had taken place at the end of May 1845, Ellen felt free to ask Charlotte to join her. At first Charlotte refused, thinking it would be wrong to leave her father for any length of time when his eyesight was so poor and his spirits so low. In the middle of June, however, circumstances changed. Branwell and Anne came home for their annual summer holiday and Anne dropped her bombshell. She had handed in her resignation and did not intend to return to Thorp Green. Her reasons for doing so would only become clear later. Branwell was only home for a week and then had to return before taking the rest of his holiday while the Robinsons were at Scarborough. Anne’s presence at home freed Charlotte to accept Ellen’s invitation.27

  The visit to Hathersage proved difficult to arrange, partly because of the problems of travelling in unfamiliar country and partly because Emily and Anne had plans for their own amusement. They had decided to celebrate Anne’s release from the bondage of teaching by taking a short holiday together. Their first idea was to go to Scarborough, a place which Anne loved but Emily had never visited. They would take advantage of the opening of a new railway from York to Scarborough which would make the trip much easier. When the opening of the railway was delayed until 7 July, however, they were obliged to change their plans. A two-day visit to Ilkley, some fifteen miles from Haworth, was contemplated, but in the end they settled on the more exciting prospect of a trip to York.28