Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  In the meantime Emily and I [she writes] are sufficiently busy as you may suppose: I manage the ironing and keep the rooms clean, Emily does the baking and attends to the kitchen. We are such odd animals that we prefer this mode of contrivance to having a new face amongst us.... Human feelings are queer things. I am much happier black-leading the stoves, making the beds, and sweeping the floor at home than I should be living like a fine lady anywhere else.

  In leisure from housework she wrote, over the signature of Charles Townsend, a story in three books called Caroline Vernon, and another story, unnamed, with the same signature. Southey’s discouragement of poetry apparently still was potent, but the instinct for composition of some sort was irresistible.

  CHAPTER VI

  In the familiar surroundings of home, with no strange faces to reduce her to silence and aloof discomfort, and no immediate prospect of going out again on educational exiles, Charlotte blossomed into a gaiety and sense of fun that never again revisited her, and we rapturously read in her letters the account of the loves of the Reverend William Weightman, Mr. Brontë’s curate. Certainly there enters into it a very decent allowance of acidity and of ridicule, but it is mixed with kindliness and genuine laughter. It was not long before curates — the genus ‘Curate’ — became to her a target for peculiarly malicious arrows. She could see no good in them; ‘they were a self-seeking, vain, empty race,’ and in Shirley she made them the butt of immortal and libellous satire, designed to give pain. Later yet, by a providential irony of kindlier humour than hers, it was with one of Mr. Brontë’s curates of whom she had hitherto entertained the gloomiest opinions, that she found, in marriage, the few months of real happiness which she had missed all her life.

  At present the Rev. William Weightman concerns us. He was a graduate of Durham University, he was gay and handsome and an incorrigible flirt; his brief history must be detached from the main narrative. Charlotte’s letters are full of him: she dubbed him, owing to an effeminacy of manner and appearance, Miss Celia Amelia, and all the young ladies of the neighbourhood were the objects of his passion and fell victims to his invincible charms. There was Sarah Sugden, there was Caroline Dury, and there was Agnes Walton, of whom Charlotte painted a portrait to remind him of this charmer. ‘You would laugh to see,’ she wrote to Ellen, ‘how his eyes sparkle with delight when he looks at it, like a pretty child pleased with a new plaything.’ She painted his portrait as well, and there were very many sittings required for this. Too many, thought Ellen, and she warned Charlotte that she was falling in love with Celia Amelia; in turn Charlotte warned Ellen that she was doing precisely the same, and she must not lose her heart to him, for he made eyes at every girl he saw. Even when he was performing his sacred ministries he could not take his mind off them, and he sat opposite Anne in church, ‘sighing softly and looking out of the corner of his eyes to win her attention!’ He introduced unusual gaieties to the Parsonage; he found that none of the three girls had ever received a Valentine, so he sent them each one with an accompaniment of amorous verses, walking ten miles to post them, so that Aunt Branwell should not suspect him of this light conduct. He gave a lecture on some classical subject at Keighley, and insisted that the three sisters should come to hear it: they did not get back to the Parsonage till midnight, and Aunt Branwell, who had prepared coffee for the girls only, found that more was required for Celia Amelia and his chaperoning friend, and lost her temper. This lecture was printed in a local paper, and Celia Amelia sent a copy of it to Ellen, with a couple of ducks. Badinage abounded, and again and again Charlotte counselled Ellen not to lose her heart to the all-conquering curate, who thought her a fine-looking girl, for he was fickle as the wind. He had an inamorata at Swansea, but he quarrelled with her and sent her back all her letters, while the more fortunate Caroline Dury received ‘a most passionate copy of verses.’ He went to Ripon to pass his examination for priest’s orders, and enjoyed the balls there immensely and twice more fell desperately in love. There were games at the Parsonage now, drawing games, and Charlotte sent Ellen a sketch of a horse’s head ‘by the sacred fingers of his reverence William Weightman ... you should have seen the vanity with which he afterwards regarded his productions. One of them represented the flying figure of Fame inscribing his own name on the clouds.’ Charlotte sometimes signs these sprightly letters to Ellen ‘Charivari’ or ‘Caliban,’ and addresses her as ‘Mrs. Menelaus.’

  Now all this exuberant chaff which pervaded Charlotte’s letters to Ellen for a year and a half at the least was so unlike the picture which Mrs. Gaskell had formed of her and of her deep and invariable seriousness of character that, though she saw the letters, and quotes from them, she omits the whole of these frivolities. They were not suitable: they could not be recounted without spoiling the composition of that picture of Charlotte, always grave and tender and loving, which she so misleadingly painted. Out of these letters concerning Celia Amelia (though she does not even hint at this frivolous nickname by which Charlotte habitually speaks of him) all that she gives is the edifying information that he preached a most violent sermon against Dissenters in Haworth Church, that he was extremely kind to the poor, and picks out a few sentences in which Charlotte, evidently in answer to badinage, assures Ellen that she was not on very amiable terms with him. ‘We are distant, cold and reserved. We seldom speak, and when we do, it is only to exchange the most trivial and commonplace remarks.’ But, as a matter of fact, throughout this period Charlotte’s letters are effervescent with fun at the kindly expense of Celia Amelia. Such a strain of gaiety is certainly surprising, for at no other period of her life, except in the last six months of it, is there any note of merriment, and it is pleasant to know that there was this interlude of comedy bordering on farce at the Parsonage.

  But another Brontë biographer has more than made up for Mrs. Gaskell’s suppressions, and Miss Isabel Clarke, in her charmingly written book, Haworth Parsonage, has added to the Brontë-Saga so amazing a romance concerning Mr. Weightman and Emily Brontë that it, and the grounds on which it is based, must be briefly examined. The grounds are merely that Miss Robinson (Madame Duclaux) stated in her book on Emily Brontë that ‘the first curate at Haworth (Mr. Weightman) was exempted from Emily’s liberal scorn.’ Miss Clarke suggests that the information was derived from Ellen Nussey, and on that somewhat bare stem proceeds to graft a sumptuously flowering romance which, as far as can be ascertained, is wholly imaginary. As follows:

  Ellen Nussey on her visits to Haworth went for walks with Mr. Weightman, and to check his amorous attentions Emily was sent out with them, ‘ostensibly in the capacity of chaperon, thereby earning for herself the nickname of the “Major.”’ But, Miss Clarke tells us,

  while he walked and flirted with Miss Nussey, he glanced with admiration and something of wonder at the tall slight form of the ‘Major.’ He noticed her dark, soft kindling eyes, her thick hair, the strange, brooding, other-worldly look. He saw that this girl, destined to so tragic a doom, was not as the others. She loved him.

  Now this is rather startling. All we actually know is that Emily did not dislike Mr. Weightman as much as she disliked the curates who succeeded him. Miss Clarke confesses that ‘upon that subject Emily allowed no word to pass her lips. If she made a confidante of Anne the younger sister never betrayed that confidence, even after she had gone to her grave.’ Nor does Charlotte in all her numerous allusions to Weightman ever even hint that Emily was attracted by him. She tells us that he made eyes at Anne in church, that he flirted desperately with the Misses Walton, Sugden and Dury, and for that reason (as Charlotte herself writes) she warns Ellen not to allow herself to fall under his charm, for he made love to every girl he met. But Miss Clarke tells us that this was not the real reason. These love affairs were, as Charlotte knew, ‘merely ephemeral, for it was still Emily who held his heart.’ Then he was in love with her too; Miss Clarke proves this triumphantly. She tells us ‘that he loved her is undeniable, for she was the last woman in the world to give h
er love unsought.’ In other words, having invented the idea that Emily was in love with him, Miss Clarke asks us to deduce that he must have been in love with Emily, because otherwise Emily would not have allowed herself to be in love with him, and with this firmly established and knit together, the romance proceeds blithely on its way. Why, if Emily was deeply in love with Weightman and he deeply in love with Emily, he did not tell her so and find that his passion was returned, it would evidently be profane to inquire; the main fact of their mutual passion is already proved. It follows, therefore, that when Emily wrote her poem, If grief for grief can touch thee, ending with the stanza

  Yes, by the tears I’ve poured, By all my hours of pain, O, I shall surely win thee, Beloved, again.

  these lines were addressed to Weightman. Again, when Charlotte took Emily to Brussels two years later, it was not, as the ignorant might suppose, on the evidence of Charlotte’s letters, for the purpose of completing their education with a view to setting up a school, but that she might ‘take her sister away from a position that his (Weightman’s) gay philandering had rendered untenable.’ Emily’s unhappiness at Brussels again was not due to the acute heart-sickness which she always suffered from when she was away from Haworth, and which had caused her recall from Miss Wooler’s school, but to the craving for the presence of Weightman. Weightman died while she was away, and so it is equally clear that when she wrote Remembrance it was he of whom she speaks as ‘Sweet Love of Youth.’ It is true that she also speaks of ‘fifteen wild Decembers’ having passed since his death, whereas there had been only three, but that, we are assured, was mere camouflage. Finally, to clinch the matter, Miss Clarke finds in Wuthering Heights passages that were ‘indubitably wrought out of a passionately emotional experience which imagination alone could never have inspired.’ ‘Who else but Weightman,’ she asks us, ‘could it have been?’ To that certainly there is no answer, but examine the evidence (or lack of it) as we may, we can find no sort of reason for supposing that it was anybody.

  We have then two ardent Brontëites, the one of whom, in dealing with the ‘affaire Weightman,’ suppresses all hint of Charlotte’s intense preoccupation and amusement with his numerous flirtations, while the other finds therein a proof of the deep attachment that existed between him and Emily. The middle way is perhaps the safest — namely, to accept what Charlotte says about him, and to reject her complete silence as being evidence for the existence of a romance of which she gives no hint.

  II

  During this period Charlotte’s scheme for the educational career of her sisters and herself was for the present in abeyance. She had come back from Mrs. Sidgwick’s, and six months later Anne gave up her situation as governess to Mrs. Ingham’s children. The scheme of starting a joint school, possibly at the Parsonage, was already being discussed, but there could be no immediate prospect of that, and, during this winter of 1839-1840, she and Branwell, still allies, began their literary labours again — he on the work of translating the Odes of Horace into English verse, she on a Richardsonian novel of which she felt she had the material for half-a-dozen volumes. Early in 1840 Branwell found a tutorship in the family of Mr. Postlethwaite at Broughton-in-Furness, in Westmorland, and from there wrote a highly vigorous and unedifying letter to John Brown, the sexton at Haworth and President of the ‘Lodge of the Three Graces,’ which strongly resembles some of those letters which R. L. Stevenson wrote during his period of turbulent and intemperate adolescence at Edinburgh.

  Old Knave of Trumps: Don’t think I have forgotten you, though I have delayed so long in writing to you. It was my purpose to send you a yarn as soon as I could find materials to spin one with and it is only just now that I have had time to turn myself round and know where I am. If you saw me now you would not know me, and you would laugh to hear the character the people give me. Oh, the falsehood and hypocrisy of this world! I am fixed in a little retired town by the seashore, among wild woody hills that rise round me — huge, rocky and capped with clouds. My employer is a retired County Magistrate, a large landowner, and of a right hearty and generous disposition. His wife is a quiet, silent and amiable woman, and his sons are two fine spirited lads. My landlord is a respectable surgeon, two days out of seven is as drunk as a lord! His wife is a bustling, chattering, kind-hearted soul, and his daughter! oh! death and damnation! Well, what am I? That is, what do they think I am? A most calm, sedate, sober, abstemious, patient, mild-hearted, virtuous, gentlemanly philosopher — the picture of good works, and the treasure-house of righteous thoughts. Cards are shuffled under the table-cloth, glasses are thrust into the cupboard if I enter the room. I take neither spirits, wine, nor malt liquors, I dress in black, and smile like a saint or martyr. Everybody says ‘What a good young gentleman is Mr. Postlethwaite’s tutor!’ This is a fact as I am a living soul, and right comfortably do I laugh at them. I mean to continue in their good opinion. I took a half-year’s farewell of old friend whisky at Kendal on the night after I left. There was a party of gentlemen at the Royal Hotel and I joined them. We ordered a supper and whisky-toddy as ‘hot as hell’! They thought I was a physician and put me in the chair. I gave sundry toasts, that were washed down at the same time, till the room spun round and the candles danced in our eyes. One of the guests was a respectable old gentleman with powdered head, rosy cheeks, fat paunch and ringed fingers. He gave ‘The Ladies’ ... after which he brayed off with a speech; and in two minutes, in the middle of a grand sentence he stopped, wiped his head, looked wildly round, stammered, coughed, stopped again and called for his slippers. The waiter helped him to bed. Next a tall Irish squire and a native of the land of Israel began to quarrel about their countries, and, in the warmth of argument, discharged their glasses, each at his neighbour’s throat instead of his own. I recommended bleeding, purging and blistering, but they administered each other a real ‘Jem Warder,’ so I flung my tumbler on the floor too, and swore I’d join ‘Old Ireland!’ A regular rumpus ensued, but we were tamed at last. I found myself in bed next morning with a bottle of porter, a glass and a corkscrew beside me. Since then I have not tasted anything stronger than milk and water, nor, I hope, shall till I return at Midsummer; when we will see about it. I am getting as fat as Prince William at Springhead, as godly as his friend Parson Winterbotham. My hand shakes no longer, I ride to the banker’s at Ulveston with Mr. Postlethwaite, and sit drinking tea and talking scandal with old ladies. As to the young ones! I have one sitting by me just now — fair-faced, blue-eyed, dark-haired, sweet eighteen — and she little thinks the devil is so near her!

  I was delighted to see thy note, old Squire, but I do not understand one sentence — you will perhaps know what I mean. How are all about you? I long to hear and see thee again. How is the ‘Devil’s Thumb’? whom men call —— , and the ‘Devil in Mourning,’ whom they call —— . How are —— , and —— , and the Doctor, and him who will be used as the tongs of hell — he whose eyes Satan looks out of, as from windows, I mean —— , esquire? How are little —— , ‘Longshanks’ —— and the rest of them? Are they married, buried, devilled and damned? When I come I’ll give them a good squeeze of the hand; till then I am too godly for them to think of. That bow-legged devil used to ask me impertinent questions which I answered him in kind, Beelzebub will make of him a walking stick! Keep to thy teetotalism, old squire, till I return, it will mend thy old body. Does ‘little Nosey’ think I have forgotten him? No, by Jupiter! nor his clock either. I’ll send him a remembrance some of these days! But I must talk to some one prettier than thee; so goodnight, old boy, and believe me thine

  The Philosopher.

  Write directly. Of course you won’t show this letter; and, for Heaven’s sake, blot out all the lines scored with red ink.

  Now this letter is certainly no uplifting document. It is full of drink and devil and cheap brag: the writer wished to exhibit himself as the deuce of a fellow, and it shocked Mr. Swinburne very much. Evidently Branwell was trying to be literary and impressive, and the style in con
sequence is monstrously pompous and pretentious, though we cannot deny that the description of the party at Kendal is vigorous and picturesque. The letter would not be worth reprinting at all, except that it furnishes us with an example of Branwell’s style in narrative, and will be useful for subsequent reference. It is not, moreover, quite the letter we should have expected from one who was already supposedly besotted and ruined by drink and drugs, and this is borne out by the fact that Bramwell was now engaged in translating three books of Horace’s Odes into English verse. While tutor to Mr. Postlethwaite’s boys he met Hartley Coleridge, spent a day with him at Ambleside, and sent him, asking for his opinion, his translation of two of these books. What Coleridge thought of them there is no record, but Mr. John Drinkwater, who privately printed them in 1910, bestowed on them his high commendation. ‘The first book,’ he tells us, ‘need, at their best, fear comparison with no other version.’ He finds in them passages of clear lyrical beauty; he considers them ‘excellent in themselves, and as good as any English version I know.’