Brontës
Page 100
by Juliet Barker tell you these things – because it is absolutely necessary to me to have some relief – You will forgive me – and not to trouble yourself – or imagine that I am one whit worse than I say.’104 So deep had her depression become that Charlotte even began to consider the possibility of leaving home again. ‘I feel to my deep sorrow – to my humiliation – that it is not in my power to bear the canker of constant solitude –’, she told Williams, explaining why she had been unable to make a real start on her next book,
I had calculated that when shut out from every enjoyment – from every stimulus but what could be derived from intellectual exertion, my mind would rouse itself perforce – It is not so: even intellect – even imagination will not dispense with the ray of domestic cheerfulness – with the gentle spur of family discussion – Late in the evenings and all through the nights – I fall into a condition of mind which turns entirely to the Past – to Memory, and Memory is both sad and relentless. This will never do –105
Chapter Twenty-Three
RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME
The ability to write would normally have provided Charlotte with a much-needed escape from the cloud of depression that threatened to overwhelm her, but the nature of her work over the previous few months had only added to her misery. Writing a biographical notice and an introduction to Wuthering Heights and editing her sisters’ poems had only impressed upon her the loss she had suffered and the desolation of her present existence. The approach of winter, too, could only make things worse: as the days grew shorter and the light failed earlier, her evenings became interminable. Her eyesight was not good enough to permit her to read or write by artificial light and her father and the servants always retired to bed punctually at nine o’clock. Unable to occupy either her mind or her hands in the long hours she had once spent so happily with her sisters, the burden of her solitude became unbearable.
Visitors did come regularly, but they were not of Charlotte’s seeking. In September 1850, William Forster, a wool merchant from Bradford who was later to become a distinguished statesman, and his wife Jane, the eldest daughter of Thomas Arnold, called unexpectedly and were shown into ‘the little bare parlour’ by Martha Brown. Patrick himself, preceded by Keeper, Emily’s ‘superannuated mastiff’, came to welcome them and then went out to get his daughter. She arrived after ‘a long interval’, which was probably spent in rushing around trying to make herself look presentable for her august guests. She stayed and talked for a while, Patrick popping in again to give Mr Forster a newspaper, then she disappeared ‘for an age’ to prepare the dinner, leaving her guests alone with Flossy, ‘a fat curly-haired dog’. Her reappearance, with Martha Brown and dinner, was greeted with relief and the Forsters finally departed in the middle of the afternoon, having extracted a promise that Charlotte would visit them in the spring. ‘Miss Brontë put me so in mind of her own “Jane Eyre’”, Mrs Forster wrote to her friend Mrs Gaskell. ‘She looked smaller than ever, and moved about so quietly, and noiselessly, just like a little bird … barring that all birds are joyous.’1
The Forsters were followed by a more sentimental visitor, John Stores Smith, a young man of twenty-two who belonged to the literary circles of Halifax. Despite his youth he had already written two striking books, Mirabeau and Social Aspects, published in 1848 and 1850 respectively, which he had sent to Charlotte earlier in the year. His reasons for doing so were not entirely altruistic: having heard the rumours that Currer Bell was Charlotte Brontë, his friends had persuaded him to send Mirabeau to Charlotte at Haworth; her reply, though signed ‘Currer Bell’, was a tacit admission of her authorship. A few Sundays later, a couple of his friends had taken the opportunity to attend Haworth Church so that they could ogle the authoress but Smith had declined to accompany them. Instead, he sent her Social Aspects on its publication and was rewarded with a second letter, signed ‘CBrontë’, offering her ‘sincere congratulations on the marked – the important progress made by the author’.2 Encouraged by her kindness, he had presumed to write again and, surprisingly, received an invitation to dinner. His arrival was scarcely propitious, for his dog attracted the attention of Keeper who had been lying asleep on the doorstep and, by the time he came face to face with Charlotte, he had his own terrier barking furiously under his arm and Keeper growling at his calves. Charlotte, suppressing a quiet smile, told him she had half an hour’s writing to do before dinner and took him into her father’s study. This was, of course, simply an excuse to give herself time to assist Martha in preparing the dinner.
Patrick was, in Smith’s eyes, ‘the ruin of what had been a striking and singularly handsome man. He was tall, strongly built, and even then perfectly erect. His hair was nearly white, but his eyebrows were still black … He was dressed very carelessly, in almost worn out clothes, had no proper necktie, and was in slippers.’ Smith spent an uncomfortable hour with Patrick before being summoned in to dinner with Charlotte, when he had an opportunity to scrutinize his hostess for the first time.
She was diminutive in height, and extremely fragile in figure. Her hand was one of the smallest I have ever grasped. She had no pretensions to being considered beautiful, and was as far removed from being plain. She had rather light brown hair, somewhat thin, and drawn plainly over her brow. Her complexion had no trace of colour in it, and her lips were pallid also; but she had a most sweet smile, with a touch of tender melancholy in it. Altogether she was as unpretending, undemonstrative, quiet a little lady as you could well meet.
Like most men, Smith was transfixed by her eyes: ‘they looked you through and through – and you felt they were forming an opinion of you … by a subtle penetration into the very marrow of your mind, and the innermost core of your soul’. After an equally uncomfortable dinner, Smith spent an unexpectedly happy two hours in conversation with his hostess. Reticent about herself, she was nevertheless voluble in describing London literary life, speaking with contempt of’ the minor Guerillas and Bohemians of Letters’ and with distaste of Charles Dickens, whose ostentatious extravagance she disliked. Without expressly trying to dissuade Smith from his intention of giving up commerce and going to London to earn his living as a writer, she made it clear that she thought he would fail: ‘she seemed to think the tamest Haworth life was preferable to the turning of the pen into a literary tightrope-dancing machine for gold’. They parted with Charlotte’s ‘maternal’ words of warning ringing in his ears: ‘seek out and gain the friendship of the highest and best in literature … but as for the general body of those who call themselves literary men avoid them as a moral pestilence�
�.3
Other admirers also forced themselves on Charlotte’s attention. One, signing himself ‘K.T.’, offered to give Charlotte a copy of the record he had kept of his friends’ opinions on Jane Eyre; she declined this but said she would be interested to learn the first impressions Shirley had made on unbiased minds. ‘“Shirley”, it would seem – has not been a general favourite; of the reason for its comparative failure, I have not a sufficiently clear idea, and any information tending to enlighten me on that point, I should esteem a boon.’4 Despite his irritatingly verbose style, ‘K.T.’ had some profound thoughts on Shirley which he diffidently proffered to its author: it had too many characters, the interest was not sufficiently sustained and was too scattered, he had difficulty in understanding the motives of the characters and little sympathy with their natures; most importantly, it was a book ‘founded upon and curbed by actual appearances and real people’. Her ‘obligation to the literal’ had hampered and tied up her writer’s powers. Interestingly, too, he guessed that Charlotte’s own preference for Shirley lay in the fact that she had laboured over it and that in the superiority of the descriptive powers she had employed there, she had mistaken ‘the satisfaction of the artist for the merit of the book’. Writing to thank him, Charlotte, much to her amusement, astounded ‘K.T.’ by displaying her extraordinary powers of analysis and divining that he was young, an Irishman and an artist. ‘Why should it annoy you that I discovered your Country?’ she asked him. ‘Is Ireland then a Nazareth – a Galilee from which no prophet or good thing can come?’5
Charlotte’s ability to analyse character sometimes gave her an almost prophetic ability to foresee the future, as John Stores Smith had discovered when she warned him that he would not be able to earn his living as a writer in London and as Joe Taylor was soon to discover. His marriage to Amelia Ringrose had finally taken place in October and Charlotte had received a happy letter from Amelia expressing ‘wondrous faith in her husband’s intellectual powers and acquirements’. ‘Joe’s illusion will soon be over –’, Charlotte muttered darkly, ‘but Amelia’s will not – and therein she is happier than he –’. Even before their marriage, Charlotte had correctly foreseen that Amelia’s affection would soon cease to find a response in Joe Taylor and that her overtures would meet only chilly silence. ‘I fancy – however – this is the fate of most feeling women – and when they find there is no remedy for the inevitable – they submit to circumstances – and take resignation as a substitute for content’, was her cynical comment to Ellen. ‘Amelia will do this; but not yet – nor for two or three years will it be required of her. You will see her happy for that time – nor after that time will she admit herself to be otherwise than happy – indeed if children come – the mother will well support the wife: the bridal interest lost – maternal interest will replace it.’6
Apart from her correspondence and occasional visitors, Charlotte had only her books to divert her. G.H. Lewes had lent her some French novels during her London visit, which she now found time to read, disliking Balzac and preferring the ‘Fantastic fanatical, unpractical enthusiast’, George Sand.7 Altogether more to her taste were the books from Smith, Elder & Co., which included The Roman, a long poem by Sydney Dobell, the Palladium reviewer, and, at her request, following her visit to Arnold’s family in the Lakes, A. P. Stanley’s Life of Thomas Arnold. This latter book interested her deeply and she found much to admire in both the man and his work. ‘I was struck too by the almost unbroken happiness of his life …’ she told Williams, rather wistfully, ‘owing partly to a singular exemption from those deep and bitter griefs which most human beings are called on to endure … One feels thankful to know that it has been permitted to any man to live such a life.’8
Thomas Arnold was to become almost a heroic figure to her. ‘Oh! I wish Dr Arnold were yet living or that a second Dr Arnold could be found’, Charlotte declared to Williams. ‘Were there but ten such men amongst the Hierarchs of the Church of England – she might bid defiance to all the scarlet hats and stockings in the Pope’s gift –’.9 This outburst was prompted by the Pope’s appointment of Nicholas Wiseman as Cardinal and Archbishop of Westminster. As it was the first such appointment since the Elizabethan Reformation, it caused a hysterical reaction among Protestants, particularly Anglicans, who saw the creation of Roman Catholic bishoprics in England as papal aggression. Wiseman himself was especially feared and loathed because of his influence on the Oxford Movement and his active role in winning over Puseyites to the Church of Rome – he had confirmed John Henry Newman into the Catholic faith himself. Now there were rumours that he had aspirations to the Papacy and that, if successful, he would abolish the celibacy of the Catholic priesthood and thus remove the last obstacle to reunion with the Church of England. Patrick Brontë himself had been moved to write ‘A Tract for the Times’ for the Leeds Intelligencer, pointing out, more in sorrow than anger, that ‘the whole fabric of our establishment is shaken to its very centre, and threatens to fall. The people in general no longer look on our establishment as the bulwark of Protestantism, but a Romish nursery – whilst true churchmen are overwhelmed with confusion and sorrow.’ The Catholics and other dissenters should be warned, he added, that if they overthrew the Church of England, all religion would be overthrown and people would look instead to the Goddess of Reason as they had done during the French Revolution.10
The clergy of the archdeaconry of Craven, to which Haworth belonged, sent a long letter to the same paper demanding a meeting to discuss the papal aggression. This was held in Leeds on 27 November and, although Patrick himself was not well enough to undertake the journey, Arthur Bell Nicholls was one of the 250 clergymen who put their names to the resulting resolution condemning the Pope for dishonouring the Queen, ignoring the existence of the Church of England and sowing the seeds of strife throughout the land.11
Charlotte’s loathing of Catholicism, which had been deepened by her own susceptibility to it in Brussels, was fanned to a white heat by these events. Writing to George Smith, she could not resist a sardonic portrayal of her publishers setting up an oratory in the small backroom at Cornhill, ‘with a saint in a niche – two candles always burning, a “prie-dieu” and a handsomely bound Missal; also a Confessional Chair – very comfortable, for the Priest – and a square of carpet or – better – the bare boards for the penitent’. Messrs Taylor, Williams and Smith would daily tell their beads and sign themselves with holy water, once a month making confession and receiving absolution. ‘The ease this will give to your now never-disburthened heretic consciences – words can but feebly express’. The alternative, if they resisted, was martyrdom at Smithfield, ‘some First Sunday in Advent (1860)’. ‘Forgive all the nonsense of this letter –’, Charlotte asked George Smith, ‘there is such a pleasure and relief either in writing or talking a little nonsense sometimes to anybody who is sensible enough to understand – and good-natured enough to pardon it.’12
The necessity of finding some escape from the oppression of the monotony and silence of her daily life at last drove Charlotte from home again. Anxious to see the new edition of Wuthering Heights & Agnes Grey through the press, she had turned down invitations to stay with Ellen, the newly married Taylors, Sir James Kay Shuttleworth and, reluctantly, Mrs Gaskell, though she clung to the hope that a visit to her might be arranged in January. As the second anniversary of Emily’s death loomed, however, Charlotte could no longer bear the ‘intolerably poignant’ memories which had haunted her for the past three months. She accepted an invitation to stay with Harriet Martineau for ‘a cosy winter visit’ at Ambleside in the Lake District.13
Charlotte arrived on 16 December at The Knoll, Miss Martineau’s pleasant and unpretentious Lakeland stone villa built on a slight rise in the plain at the northern end of Lake Windermere. Standing at the foot of Loughrigg Fell, it was surrounded by mountains at the rear and looked out towards the lake at the front. Harriet Martineau was something of an eccentric. She had designed the house herself and was underta
king experiments in self-sufficiency by keeping her own livestock and growing her own food. A tall and large-built woman of forty-eight, she enjoyed a robust health which neither her intellectual pursuits nor the handicap of her deafness had undermined: ‘her powers of labour – of exercise and social cheerfulness are beyond my comprehension’, Charlotte reported to her father with awe.
Her visitors enjoy the most perfect liberty; what she claims for herself she allows them. I rise at my own hour, breakfast alone – (she is up at five, takes a cold bath and a walk by starlight and has finished breakfast and got to her work by 7 o’clock) I pass the morning in the drawing-room – she in her study. At 2 o’clock we meet, work, talk and walk together till 5 – her dinner hour – spend the evening together – when she converses fluently, abundantly and with the most complete frankness – I go to my own room soon after ten – she sits up writing letters till twelve.14
For Charlotte the week of her visit passed quickly and enjoyably. She could not entirely avoid the Kay Shuttleworths, who were still at Briery Close, but as they were both unwell she was not obliged to see as much of them as might otherwise have been the case. Nevertheless, Sir James called almost daily to take her out in his carriage and Harriet Martineau had arranged plenty of other visits for her.15 They called at Rydal Mount, home of the recently deceased Poet Laureate, William Wordsworth, and met his widow and niece.16 They also dined one evening at the house of Wordsworth’s son-in-law, Edward Quillinan, where Charlotte met Matthew Arnold, the only other guest, for the first time. He described her as ‘past thirty and plain, with expressive gray eyes though’ and said he talked to her ‘of her curates, of French novels, and her education in a school at Brussels’. Charlotte’s first impressions were unfavourable: though ‘Striking and prepossessing in appearance – his manner displeases from its seeming foppery’, and she thought ‘the Shade of Dr Arnold seemed to me to frown on his young representative’. However, she soon discovered that, like his mother, he improved upon acquaintance: ‘erelong a real modesty appeared under his assumed conceit, and some genuine intellectual aspirations as well as high educational acquirements displaced superficial affectations’.17
O thou hast taken my delight
& hope of life away
And bid me watch the painful night
& wait the weary day
Charlotte substituted
Thou, God, hast taken our delight
Our treasured hope away.
Thou bidst us now weep through the night
And sorrow through the day.103
Charlotte’s version would seem to suggest that she thought the verse referred to Anne’s grief at the death of Emily, and therefore she wished to associate herself with it by changing the pronouns from ‘my’ to ‘our’. The resulting substitution is therefore not only a clumsier alternative but also a misinterpretation of the original.
One can well imagine that both her sisters would have been infuriated by Charlotte’s unwarranted interference in their work: it was on a par with her many attempts to organize them during their lives. Nevertheless, Charlotte genuinely believed that she was performing her ‘sacred duty’ in her self-appointed role as her sisters’ interpreter to the world and the task had not been pleasant.
The reading over of papers, the renewal of remembrances brought back the pang of bereavement and occasioned a depression of spirits well nigh intolerable – for one or two nights I scarcely knew how to get on till morning – and when morning came I was still haunted with a sense of sickening distress –
Confessing this to Ellen, she added apologetically, ‘I
I had calculated that when shut out from every enjoyment – from every stimulus but what could be derived from intellectual exertion, my mind would rouse itself perforce – It is not so: even intellect – even imagination will not dispense with the ray of domestic cheerfulness – with the gentle spur of family discussion – Late in the evenings and all through the nights – I fall into a condition of mind which turns entirely to the Past – to Memory, and Memory is both sad and relentless. This will never do –105
Chapter Twenty-Three
RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME
The ability to write would normally have provided Charlotte with a much-needed escape from the cloud of depression that threatened to overwhelm her, but the nature of her work over the previous few months had only added to her misery. Writing a biographical notice and an introduction to Wuthering Heights and editing her sisters’ poems had only impressed upon her the loss she had suffered and the desolation of her present existence. The approach of winter, too, could only make things worse: as the days grew shorter and the light failed earlier, her evenings became interminable. Her eyesight was not good enough to permit her to read or write by artificial light and her father and the servants always retired to bed punctually at nine o’clock. Unable to occupy either her mind or her hands in the long hours she had once spent so happily with her sisters, the burden of her solitude became unbearable.
Visitors did come regularly, but they were not of Charlotte’s seeking. In September 1850, William Forster, a wool merchant from Bradford who was later to become a distinguished statesman, and his wife Jane, the eldest daughter of Thomas Arnold, called unexpectedly and were shown into ‘the little bare parlour’ by Martha Brown. Patrick himself, preceded by Keeper, Emily’s ‘superannuated mastiff’, came to welcome them and then went out to get his daughter. She arrived after ‘a long interval’, which was probably spent in rushing around trying to make herself look presentable for her august guests. She stayed and talked for a while, Patrick popping in again to give Mr Forster a newspaper, then she disappeared ‘for an age’ to prepare the dinner, leaving her guests alone with Flossy, ‘a fat curly-haired dog’. Her reappearance, with Martha Brown and dinner, was greeted with relief and the Forsters finally departed in the middle of the afternoon, having extracted a promise that Charlotte would visit them in the spring. ‘Miss Brontë put me so in mind of her own “Jane Eyre’”, Mrs Forster wrote to her friend Mrs Gaskell. ‘She looked smaller than ever, and moved about so quietly, and noiselessly, just like a little bird … barring that all birds are joyous.’1
The Forsters were followed by a more sentimental visitor, John Stores Smith, a young man of twenty-two who belonged to the literary circles of Halifax. Despite his youth he had already written two striking books, Mirabeau and Social Aspects, published in 1848 and 1850 respectively, which he had sent to Charlotte earlier in the year. His reasons for doing so were not entirely altruistic: having heard the rumours that Currer Bell was Charlotte Brontë, his friends had persuaded him to send Mirabeau to Charlotte at Haworth; her reply, though signed ‘Currer Bell’, was a tacit admission of her authorship. A few Sundays later, a couple of his friends had taken the opportunity to attend Haworth Church so that they could ogle the authoress but Smith had declined to accompany them. Instead, he sent her Social Aspects on its publication and was rewarded with a second letter, signed ‘CBrontë’, offering her ‘sincere congratulations on the marked – the important progress made by the author’.2 Encouraged by her kindness, he had presumed to write again and, surprisingly, received an invitation to dinner. His arrival was scarcely propitious, for his dog attracted the attention of Keeper who had been lying asleep on the doorstep and, by the time he came face to face with Charlotte, he had his own terrier barking furiously under his arm and Keeper growling at his calves. Charlotte, suppressing a quiet smile, told him she had half an hour’s writing to do before dinner and took him into her father’s study. This was, of course, simply an excuse to give herself time to assist Martha in preparing the dinner.
Patrick was, in Smith’s eyes, ‘the ruin of what had been a striking and singularly handsome man. He was tall, strongly built, and even then perfectly erect. His hair was nearly white, but his eyebrows were still black … He was dressed very carelessly, in almost worn out clothes, had no proper necktie, and was in slippers.’ Smith spent an uncomfortable hour with Patrick before being summoned in to dinner with Charlotte, when he had an opportunity to scrutinize his hostess for the first time.
She was diminutive in height, and extremely fragile in figure. Her hand was one of the smallest I have ever grasped. She had no pretensions to being considered beautiful, and was as far removed from being plain. She had rather light brown hair, somewhat thin, and drawn plainly over her brow. Her complexion had no trace of colour in it, and her lips were pallid also; but she had a most sweet smile, with a touch of tender melancholy in it. Altogether she was as unpretending, undemonstrative, quiet a little lady as you could well meet.
Like most men, Smith was transfixed by her eyes: ‘they looked you through and through – and you felt they were forming an opinion of you … by a subtle penetration into the very marrow of your mind, and the innermost core of your soul’. After an equally uncomfortable dinner, Smith spent an unexpectedly happy two hours in conversation with his hostess. Reticent about herself, she was nevertheless voluble in describing London literary life, speaking with contempt of’ the minor Guerillas and Bohemians of Letters’ and with distaste of Charles Dickens, whose ostentatious extravagance she disliked. Without expressly trying to dissuade Smith from his intention of giving up commerce and going to London to earn his living as a writer, she made it clear that she thought he would fail: ‘she seemed to think the tamest Haworth life was preferable to the turning of the pen into a literary tightrope-dancing machine for gold’. They parted with Charlotte’s ‘maternal’ words of warning ringing in his ears: ‘seek out and gain the friendship of the highest and best in literature … but as for the general body of those who call themselves literary men avoid them as a moral pestilence�
�.3
Other admirers also forced themselves on Charlotte’s attention. One, signing himself ‘K.T.’, offered to give Charlotte a copy of the record he had kept of his friends’ opinions on Jane Eyre; she declined this but said she would be interested to learn the first impressions Shirley had made on unbiased minds. ‘“Shirley”, it would seem – has not been a general favourite; of the reason for its comparative failure, I have not a sufficiently clear idea, and any information tending to enlighten me on that point, I should esteem a boon.’4 Despite his irritatingly verbose style, ‘K.T.’ had some profound thoughts on Shirley which he diffidently proffered to its author: it had too many characters, the interest was not sufficiently sustained and was too scattered, he had difficulty in understanding the motives of the characters and little sympathy with their natures; most importantly, it was a book ‘founded upon and curbed by actual appearances and real people’. Her ‘obligation to the literal’ had hampered and tied up her writer’s powers. Interestingly, too, he guessed that Charlotte’s own preference for Shirley lay in the fact that she had laboured over it and that in the superiority of the descriptive powers she had employed there, she had mistaken ‘the satisfaction of the artist for the merit of the book’. Writing to thank him, Charlotte, much to her amusement, astounded ‘K.T.’ by displaying her extraordinary powers of analysis and divining that he was young, an Irishman and an artist. ‘Why should it annoy you that I discovered your Country?’ she asked him. ‘Is Ireland then a Nazareth – a Galilee
Charlotte’s ability to analyse character sometimes gave her an almost prophetic ability to foresee the future, as John Stores Smith had discovered when she warned him that he would not be able to earn his living as a writer in London and as Joe Taylor was soon to discover. His marriage to Amelia Ringrose had finally taken place in October and Charlotte had received a happy letter from Amelia expressing ‘wondrous faith in her husband’s intellectual powers and acquirements’. ‘Joe’s illusion will soon be over –’, Charlotte muttered darkly, ‘but Amelia’s will not – and therein she is happier than he –’. Even before their marriage, Charlotte had correctly foreseen that Amelia’s affection would soon cease to find a response in Joe Taylor and that her overtures would meet only chilly silence. ‘I fancy – however – this is the fate of most feeling women – and when they find there is no remedy for the inevitable – they submit to circumstances – and take resignation as a substitute for content’, was her cynical comment to Ellen. ‘Amelia will do this; but not yet – nor for two or three years will it be required of her. You will see her happy for that time – nor after that time will she admit herself to be otherwise than happy – indeed if children come – the mother will well support the wife: the bridal interest lost – maternal interest will replace it.’6
Apart from her correspondence and occasional visitors, Charlotte had only her books to divert her. G.H. Lewes had lent her some French novels during her London visit, which she now found time to read, disliking Balzac and preferring the ‘Fantastic fanatical, unpractical enthusiast’, George Sand.7 Altogether more to her taste were the books from Smith, Elder & Co., which included The Roman, a long poem by Sydney Dobell, the Palladium reviewer, and, at her request, following her visit to Arnold’s family in the Lakes, A. P. Stanley’s Life of Thomas Arnold. This latter book interested her deeply and she found much to admire in both the man and his work. ‘I was struck too by the almost unbroken happiness of his life …’ she told Williams, rather wistfully, ‘owing partly to a singular exemption from those deep and bitter griefs which most human beings are called on to endure … One feels thankful to know that it has been permitted to any man to live such a life.’8
Thomas Arnold was to become almost a heroic figure to her. ‘Oh! I wish Dr Arnold were yet living or that a second Dr Arnold could be found’, Charlotte declared to Williams. ‘Were there but ten such men amongst the Hierarchs of the Church of England – she might bid defiance to all the scarlet hats and stockings in the Pope’s gift –’.9 This outburst was prompted by the Pope’s appointment of Nicholas Wiseman as Cardinal and Archbishop of Westminster. As it was the first such appointment since the Elizabethan Reformation, it caused a hysterical reaction among Protestants, particularly Anglicans, who saw the creation of Roman Catholic bishoprics in England as papal aggression. Wiseman himself was especially feared and loathed because of his influence on the Oxford Movement and his active role in winning over Puseyites to the Church of Rome – he had confirmed John Henry Newman into the Catholic faith himself. Now there were rumours that he had aspirations to the Papacy and that, if successful, he would abolish the celibacy of the Catholic priesthood and thus remove the last obstacle to reunion with the Church of England. Patrick Brontë himself had been moved to write ‘A Tract for the Times’ for the Leeds Intelligencer, pointing out, more in sorrow than anger, that ‘the whole fabric of our establishment is shaken to its very centre, and threatens to fall. The people in general no longer look on our establishment as the bulwark of Protestantism, but a Romish nursery – whilst true churchmen are overwhelmed with confusion and sorrow.’ The Catholics and other dissenters should be warned, he added, that if they overthrew the Church of England, all religion would be overthrown and people would look instead to the Goddess of Reason as they had done during the French Revolution.10
The clergy of the archdeaconry of Craven, to which Haworth belonged, sent a long letter to the same paper demanding a meeting to discuss the papal aggression. This was held in Leeds on 27 November and, although Patrick himself was not well enough to undertake the journey, Arthur Bell Nicholls was one of the 250 clergymen who put their names to the resulting resolution condemning the Pope for dishonouring the Queen, ignoring the existence of the Church of England and sowing the seeds of strife throughout the land.11
Charlotte’s loathing of Catholicism, which had been deepened by her own susceptibility to it in Brussels, was fanned to a white heat by these events. Writing to George Smith, she could not resist a sardonic portrayal of her publishers setting up an oratory in the small backroom at Cornhill, ‘with a saint in a niche – two candles always burning, a “prie-dieu” and a handsomely bound Missal; also a Confessional Chair – very comfortable, for the Priest – and a square of carpet or – better – the bare boards for the penitent’. Messrs Taylor, Williams and Smith would daily tell their beads and sign themselves with holy water, once a month making confession and receiving absolution. ‘The ease this will give to your now never-disburthened heretic consciences – words can but feebly express’. The alternative, if they resisted, was martyrdom at Smithfield, ‘some First Sunday in Advent (1860)’. ‘Forgive all the nonsense of this letter –’, Charlotte asked George Smith, ‘there is such a pleasure and relief either in writing or talking a little nonsense sometimes to anybody who is sensible enough to understand – and good-natured enough to pardon it.’12
The necessity of finding some escape from the oppression of the monotony and silence of her daily life at last drove Charlotte from home again. Anxious to see the new edition of Wuthering Heights & Agnes Grey through the press, she had turned down invitations to stay with Ellen, the newly married Taylors, Sir James Kay Shuttleworth and, reluctantly, Mrs Gaskell, though she clung to the hope that a visit to her might be arranged in January. As the second anniversary of Emily’s death loomed, however, Charlotte could no longer bear the ‘intolerably poignant’ memories which had haunted her for the past three months. She accepted an invitation to stay with Harriet Martineau for ‘a cosy winter visit’ at Ambleside in the Lake District.13
Charlotte arrived on 16 December at The Knoll, Miss Martineau’s pleasant and unpretentious Lakeland stone villa built on a slight rise in the plain at the northern end of Lake Windermere. Standing at the foot of Loughrigg Fell, it was surrounded by mountains at the rear and looked out towards the lake at the front. Harriet Martineau was something of an eccentric. She had designed the house herself and was underta
king experiments in self-sufficiency by keeping her own livestock and growing her own food. A tall and large-built woman of forty-eight, she enjoyed a robust health which neither her intellectual pursuits nor the handicap of her deafness had undermined: ‘her powers of labour – of exercise and social cheerfulness are beyond my comprehension’, Charlotte reported to her father with awe.
Her visitors enjoy the most perfect liberty; what she claims for herself she allows them. I rise at my own hour, breakfast alone – (she is up at five, takes a cold bath and a walk by starlight and has finished breakfast and got to her work by 7 o’clock) I pass the morning in the drawing-room – she in her study. At 2 o’clock we meet, work, talk and walk together till 5 – her dinner hour – spend the evening together – when she converses fluently, abundantly and with the most complete frankness – I go to my own room soon after ten – she sits up writing letters till twelve.14
For Charlotte the week of her visit passed quickly and enjoyably. She could not entirely avoid the Kay Shuttleworths, who were still at Briery Close, but as they were both unwell she was not obliged to see as much of them as might otherwise have been the case. Nevertheless, Sir James called almost daily to take her out in his carriage and Harriet Martineau had arranged plenty of other visits for her.15 They called at Rydal Mount, home of the recently deceased Poet Laureate, William Wordsworth, and met his widow and niece.16 They also dined one evening at the house of Wordsworth’s son-in-law, Edward Quillinan, where Charlotte met Matthew Arnold, the only other guest, for the first time. He described her as ‘past thirty and plain, with expressive gray eyes though’ and said he talked to her ‘of her curates, of French novels, and her education in a school at Brussels’. Charlotte’s first impressions were unfavourable: though ‘Striking and prepossessing in appearance – his manner displeases from its seeming foppery’, and she thought ‘the Shade of Dr Arnold seemed to me to frown on his young representative’. However, she soon discovered that, like his mother, he improved upon acquaintance: ‘erelong a real modesty appeared under his assumed conceit, and some genuine intellectual aspirations as well as high educational acquirements displaced superficial affectations’.17