Brontës

by Juliet Barker

  God Bless & comfort you both, my dear friends, is the devout prayer of

  Your sincere & attached

  Wm Smith Williams.30

  Charlotte was surely right in describing this letter as ‘eloquent in its sincerity’.31

  Though Emily had been far closer to her than Branwell in recent years, Charlotte did not give way this time. Instead of taking to her bed, she became a pillar of strength to her father and sister, who were both far from well. ‘My Father says to me almost hourly, “Charlotte, you must bear up – I shall sink if you fail me.” these words – you can conceive are a stimulus to nature. The sight too of my Sister Anne’s very still but deep sorrow wakens in me such fear for her that I dare not falter. Somebody must cheer the rest.’32

  Emily would surely have approved of the way the arrangements for her funeral were carried out with the minimum of fuss and show. Obituary notices were sent out to the local papers and funeral cards printed for circulation among friends and relatives; white funeral gloves were purchased for the mourners and Emily’s hair was cut to provide mourning jewellery.33 The burial service, held on 22 December, was simple and quiet. This time Patrick did not send for Morgan but gratefully put the obsequies in the capable hands of his curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. It was surely appropriate that the small funeral procession was headed by the bereaved father, mourning his ‘beloved daughter’, and Keeper, Emily’s faithful dog, ‘walking first side by side’. They were followed by Charlotte and Anne and then, in their turn, by Tabby and Martha. As Charlotte was later to recall with sad pride, Keeper also followed Emily’s coffin to the vault where she was buried, lay in the family pew at their feet while the burial service was being read and then took up his forlorn station outside the door of Emily’s room, where he howled pitifully for many days.34

  The day after the burial, Charlotte at last wrote to tell Ellen. ‘She died on Tuesday, the very day I wrote to you. I thought it very possible then she might be with us still for weeks and a few hours afterwards she was in Eternity’ Inviting Ellen to come to Haworth to provide the consolation of a friend’s presence, Charlotte reassured her:

  We are very calm at present, why should we be otherwise? – the anguish of seeing her suffer is over – the spectacle of the pains of Death is gone by – the funeral day is past – we feel she is at peace – no need now to tremble for the hard frost and keen wind – Emily does not feel them. She has died in a time of promise – we saw her torn from life in its prime –35

  For Charlotte, this was to become a litany: Branwell was forever to be an example of promise betrayed, Emily one of promise unfulfilled. ‘I will not now ask why Emily was torn from us in the fulness of our attachment,’ Charlotte wrote to Williams on Christmas Day 1848,

  rooted up in the prime of her own days in the promise of her powers – why her existence now lies like a field of green corn trodden down – like a tree in full bearing – struck at the root; I will only say, sweet is rest after labour and calm after tempest and repeat again and again that Emily knows that now.36

  Curiously, Emily’s publisher, Thomas Cautley Newby, had announced at the beginning of December that he was to publish another work by Ellis and Acton Bell. After receiving only twenty-five pounds for the copyright of The Tenant ofWildfellHall, despite its good sales, Anne had already said that she would not use him again and would offer any new work to Smith, Elder & Co.37 This leaves only the intriguing possibility that Emily had informed Newby that her next book was almost complete, not anticipating that her own rapid decline in health would prevent her finishing it to her satisfaction. Had Newby ever received the manuscript he would undoubtedly have published it, so the inference again is that Charlotte, finding and reading Emily’s second novel, decided that its subject, too, was an entire mistake’ and would not improve ‘Ellis Bell’s’ reputation. In such circumstances, she must have felt justified in destroying the manuscript.

  The subject of Emily’s second novel is a matter for speculation only; however, despite the traumas in the Brontë household, the publications continued. Smith, Elder & Co. had reissued Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell in November 1848; even with their backing and the newly found reputation of the authors, however, the book had only slow and disappointing sales. The critics, too, were obtuse in discerning talent only in the poems of Currer Bell, fulfilling their own prophecy that the author of Jane Eyre, the best of the Bell novels, would also be the best poet.38 Ironically, however, it was Anne who was enjoying a quiet success with her poems. Frasers Magazineh&d published her long poem, ‘TheThree Guides’, written on 11 August 1848, in their issue of that month. In December they carried another of her poems, printed under her pseudonym, Acton Bell. Coming as it did at such a bleak time, this was particularly gratifying to Anne. Ellen Nussey, who had answered her friend’s call and come straight over to Haworth at the end of December, observed a slow smile stealing over Anne’s face as they sat before the fire one evening. When she asked her why, Anne replied, ‘Only because I see they have inserted one of my poems.’39 This was the first open admission of their publishing that any of the Brontës had made to Ellen. It occurred only after Emily’s death.

  The poem was one Anne had written earlier in the year, in April, but its verses had greater resonance in the wake of the deaths of Branwell and Emily.

  Believe not those who say

  The upward path is smooth,

  Lest thou shouldst stumble in the way,

  And faint before the truth.

  Though unintentional, the poem was also an answer to those of her critics who had attacked Anne’s motives in writing The Tenant ofWildfell Hall:

  What matters who should whisper blame,

  Or who should scorn or slight? –

  What matters – if thy

  God approve, And if, within thy breast,

  Thou feel the comfort of His love,

  The earnest of His rest?40

  On the same day she learnt of the publication of’The Narrow Way’, Anne replied to a letter she had received from the Reverend David Thom of Liverpool. He had written Acton Bell an enthusiastic and flattering letter, expressing the pleasure he had derived from the ‘Bells’’ novels but especially congratulating her on her espousal of the doctrine of universal salvation in The Tenant ofWildfell Hall. This had, in fact, been noticed and condemned by certain critics. The very idea that there was no such thing as eternal damnation and that, after a period of purifying purgatory, all men, however wicked, could attain heaven was ‘alike repugnant to Scripture, and in direct opposition to the teaching of the Anglican Church’, Sharpe’s London Magazine had thundered. Thorn’s letter of support, whether in response to the novel or the review, was undoubtedly welcome to Anne: she had cherished the idea from childhood, she told him,

  with a trembling hope at first, and afterwards with a firm and glad conviction of its truth. I drew it secretly from my own heart and from the word of God before I knew that any other held it. And since then it has ever been a source of true delight to me to find the same views either timidly suggested or boldly advocated by benevolent and thoughtful minds;

  In The Tenant ofWildfellHall, Anne confessed to Thom, ‘I have given as many hints in support of the doctrine as I could venture to introduce into a work of that description. They are however mere suggestions, and as such I trust you will receive them.’41

  Anne’s own faith was about to be put to its severest test of all. Since at least the beginning of December she had been too delicate to do much and, ominously, had complained of frequent pains in the side.42 Her profound grief at Emily’s death and the unbearable strain her illness had caused over the last few months, combined to reduce Anne’s health still further. Over Christmas and New Year, as it became apparent that she was not recovering as she should, she fell victim to a further bout of influenza. Alarmed and concerned that Dr Wheelhouse was out of his depth, Patrick decided that Anne should see a specialist. On 5 January 1849, Mr Teale, a respected Leeds physician experienced
in cases of consumption, came to the parsonage to examine her. Ellen Nussey, who was still staying with the Brontës, recalled how Anne was looking sweetly pretty and flushed and in capital spirits for an invalid’, even though she was fully aware of the importance of the diagnosis.

  While consultations were going on in Mr Brontës study, Anne was very lively in conversation, walking round the room supported by me. Mr Brontë joined us after Dr Teale’s departure and, seating himself on the couch, he drew Anne towards him and said, ‘My dear little Anne.’ That was all – but it was understood.43

  Only three days before this, Charlotte had told Williams that Anne, and her father, were suffering from ‘severe influenza colds’. Now she knew that Anne, too, had tubercular consumption and that it was only a matter of time until she lost her last remaining sister: the only hope Mr Teale could offer was for a ‘truce’ or ‘arrest’ to the progress of the disease if Anne followed a strict regimen of quiet and rest and took the cod-liver oil and carbonate of iron he prescribed for her.44

  Anne’s cheerful show of bravery, not only during Mr Teale’s visit but also throughout the ensuing months, was all the more remarkable and poignant because it was assumed. Knowing how much her father and sister had suffered from seeing Emily refuse medical treatment, she submitted to all the revolting, painful and ultimately useless remedies suggested by the doctors. Within days of Mr Teale’s visit she was having blisters – hot compresses intended to draw the disease to the surface – applied to her side and taking doses of cod-liver oil which she graphically described as smelling and tasting like train oil; the effect of these treatments was to weaken her further with nausea.45 Nevertheless, she appeared calm and stoical to her family: Anne is very patient in her illness’, Charlotte told Williams,’– as patient as Emily was unflinching. I recall one sister and look at the other with a sort of reverence as well as affection – under the test of suffering neither have faltered.’46 Had Charlotte but known it, Anne’s outward passivity was a shell, masking an all too natural panic and despair. The religious doubts which had haunted her in the past returned. Two days after Mr Teale’s visit, Anne poured out in a poem her private anguish on hearing her death sentence:

  A dreadful darkness closes in

  On my bewildered mind

  O let me suffer & not sin

  Be tortured yet resigned

  Through all this world of whelming mist

  Still let me look to thee

  And give me courage to resist

  The Tempter till he flee

  Weary I am – O give me strength

  And leave me not to faint

  Say thou wilt Comfort me at length

  And pity my complaint

  I’ve begged to serve thee heart & soul

  To sacrifice to thee

  No niggard portion but the whole

  Of my identity

  I hoped amid the brave & strong

  My portioned task might lie

  To toil amid the labouring throng

  With purpose Keen & high

  But thou hast fixed another part

  And thou hast fixed it well

  I said so with my bleeding heart

  When first the anguish fell

  O thou hast taken my delight

  & hope of life away

  And bid me watch the painful night

  & wait the weary day

  The hope & the delight were thine

  I bless thee for their loan

  I gave thee while I deemed them mine

  Too little thanks I own47

  It was not simply the thought of death itself that instilled such despair into Anne, but rather the fact that she had achieved so little. Her life, like Branwell’s and Emily’s, was to be the story of ambition and potential unfulfilled. Three weeks later, having had time to reflect on her fate and come to terms with it, Anne returned to the poem and added a further nine verses. Less desperate in tone, they show Anne’s determination to find some value in the suffering which, she knew all too well, she would have to endure.

  These weary hours will not be lost

  These days of passive misery

  These nights of darkness anguish-tost

  If I can fix my heart on thee …

  That secret labour to sustain

  With humble patience every blow

  To gather fortitude from Pain

  And hope & holiness from Wo

  Thus let me serve thee from my heart

  Whate’er my written fate

  Whether thus early to depart

  Or yet, awhile to wait

  If thou whouldst bring me back to life

  More humbled I should be

  More Wise more strengthened for the strife

  More apt to lean on thee

  Should Death be standing at the gate

  Thus should I Keep my vow

  But Lord whate’er my future fate

  So let me serve thee now48

  While Anne kept her innermost thoughts and sufferings to herself, Charlotte could not be so self-contained, especially once Ellen had returned to Brookroyd. ‘In sitting down to write to you’, she told Williams,

  I feel as if I were doing a wrong and a selfish thing; I believe I ought to discontinue my correspondence with you till times change and the tide of calamity which of late days has set so strongly in against us, takes a turn. But the fact is, sometimes I feel it absolutely necessary to unburden my mind. To papa I must only speak cheeringly, to Anne only encouragingly, to you I may give some hint of the dreary truth.49

  That dreary truth was soon told: ‘Anne cannot study now, she can scarcely read; she occupies Emily’s chair – she does not get well.’ What could not be told so quickly was the anguish Charlotte herself was suffering.

  When we lost Emily I thought we had drained the very dregs of our cup of trial but now when I hear Anne cough as Emily coughed, I tremble lest there should be exquisite bitterness yet to taste. However I must not look forwards, nor must I look backwards. Too often I feel like one crossing an abyss on a narrow plank – a glance round might quite unnerve …

  All the days of this winter have gone by darkly and heavily like a funeral train; since September sickness has not quitted the house – it is strange – it did not use to be so – but I suspect now all this has been coming on for years: unused any of us to the possession of robust health, we have not noticed the gradual approaches of decay; we did not know its symptoms; the little cough, the small appetite, the tendency to take cold at every variation of atmosphere have been regarded as things of course – I see them in another light now.50

  In the circumstances, and given Charlotte’s tendency to hypochondria at times of stress or crisis, it is not surprising that she herself now developed the symptoms of consumption. Even though, at MrTeale’s recommendation she no longer shared a bed with Anne, Charlotte had pains in her chest and back, her voice was hoarse and her throat sore. She treated herself with pitch plasters, bran tea and applications of hot vinegar and, when Ellen sent a present of cork soles which retained warmth against the cold, stone-flagged parsonage floors for the genuine invalid, Charlotte commissioned her to buy a pair for herself.51

  Charlotte was fortunate in having good friends. Ellen Nussey gave practical assistance, not only sending the cork soles but also recommending and purchasing a respirator to ease Anne’s breathing; Williams offered moral support, an ever-sympathetic ear and another parcel of carefully chosen books.52 George Smith suggested that Dr John Forbes, a personal friend who was also editor of the Medical Review, physician to the Queen’s household and, most importantly, one of the first authorities in England on consumptive cases, should visit Haworth and examine Anne for himself. Charlotte, clutching at straws, ran to her father with this last proposal only to be bitterly disappointed when he rejected it. More realistic than his daughter, he could not see that anything would be achieved by dragging a physician, however eminent, all the way from London when Anne was already in the care of Mr Teale
. ‘Notwithstanding his habitual reluctance to place himself under obligations’, Charlotte informed George Smith that Patrick would ‘unhesitatingly accept an offer so delicately made … did he think any really useful end could be answered by a visit from Dr Forbes’. It is a measure of Charlotte’s desperation that she then went behind her father’s back and requested that Dr Forbes would at least comment on Mr Teale’s diagnosis and course of treatment. Dr Forbes replied with a speed and kindness that Charlotte was long to remember. He knew Mr Teale well and thought highly of him; his course of treatment was just what he would himself have recommended, but he warned against entertaining sanguine hopes of recovery. Disappointed once more, Charlotte reported his verdict to Ellen, adding, ‘There is some feeble consolation in thinking we are doing the very best that can be done – the agony of forced, total neglect is not now felt as during Emily’s illness.’53

  By the beginning of February, the worst of Anne’s symptoms had abated; she was less feverish and her cough was less troublesome. Suddenly hopeful that the remedies might be working and that Anne might gain a lasting reprieve, Charlotte began to give some thought to the writing she had neglected for so long. ‘My literary character is effaced for the time –’, Charlotte had written to Williams only two weeks before. ‘Should Anne get better, I think I could rally and become Currer Bell once more – but if otherwise – I look no farther – sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’54 Though new composition had been next to impossible in recent weeks, she had occupied her spare moments in making a fair copy of the first volume of her new book, Shirley. It was therefore with a sense of dismay that Charlotte read Mary Barton, the recently published first novel by Mrs Gaskell, which was a powerful indictment of contemporary Manchester life. Set during the terrible distress of the industrial slump of 1842–3, the plot centred on the murder of one of the mill owners by his desperate workmen. Though in feeling, tone and sympathy Mary Barton was a world away from Shirley, Charlotte could not escape the conclusion that to a certain extent she had been pre-empted in both subject and incident: her novel, too, was set in the north of England during industrial troubles and involved an assassination attempt on a mill owner. The similarity was enough to prompt her to submit the manuscript of her first volume to Smith, Elder & Co., even though this went against the grain: ‘remember –’, she warned Williams,