Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (620 page)

‘C. Brontë.’

TO REV. P. BRONTË

‘Ambleside,
August
15
th
, 1850.

‘Dear Papa, — I think I shall not come home till Thursday.  If all be well I shall leave here on Monday and spend a day or two with Ellen Nussey.  I have enjoyed my visit exceedingly.  Sir J. K. Shuttleworth has called several times and taken me out in his carriage.  He seems very truly friendly; but, I am sorry to say, he looks pale and very much wasted.  I greatly fear he will not live very long unless some change for the better soon takes place.  Lady S. is ill too, and cannot go out.  I have seen a good deal of Dr. Arnold’s family, and like them much.  As to Miss Martineau, I admire her and wonder at her more than I can say.  Her powers of labour, of exercise, and social cheerfulness are beyond my comprehension.  In spite of
 
the unceasing activity of her colossal intellect she enjoys robust health.  She is a taller, larger, and more strongly made woman than I had imagined from that first interview with her.  She is very kind to me, though she must think I am a very insignificant person compared to herself.  She has just been into the room to show me a chapter of her history which she is now writing, relating to the Duke of Wellington’s character and his proceedings in the Peninsula.  She wanted an opinion on it, and I was happy to be able to give a very approving one.  She seems to understand and do him justice.

‘You must not direct any more letters here as they will not reach me after to-day.  Hoping, dear papa, that you are well, and with kind regards to Tabby and Martha, — I am, your affectionate daughter,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘
October
2
nd
, 1850.

‘My dear Sir, — I have to thank you for the care and kindness with which you have assisted me throughout in correcting these
Remains
.

‘Whether, when they are published, they will appear to others as they do to me, I cannot tell.  I hope not.  And indeed I suppose what to me is bitter pain will only be soft pathos to the general public.

‘Miss Martineau has several times lately asked me to go and see her; and though this is a dreary season for travelling northward, I think if papa continues pretty well I shall go in a week or two.  I feel to my deep sorrow, to my humiliation, that it is not in my power to bear the canker of constant solitude.  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, and
 
will produce no good.  I tell you this that you may check false anticipations.  You cannot help me, and must not trouble yourself in any shape to sympathise with me.  It is my cup, and I must drink it, as others drink theirs. — Yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

Among Miss Brontë’s papers I find the following letter to Miss Martineau, written with a not unnatural resentment after the publication of a severe critique of
Shirley
.

TO MISS HARRIET MARTINEAU.

‘My dear Miss Martineau, — I think I best show my sense of the tone and feeling of your last, by immediate compliance with the wish you express that I should send your letter.  I inclose it, and have marked with red ink the passage which struck me dumb.  All the rest is fair, right, worthy of you, but I protest against this passage; and were I brought up before the bar of all the critics in England, to such a charge I should respond, “Not guilty.”

‘I know what
love
is as I understand it; and if man or woman should be ashamed of feeling such love, then is there nothing right, noble, faithful, truthful, unselfish in this earth, as I comprehend rectitude, nobleness, fidelity, truth, and disinterestedness. — Yours sincerely,

‘C. B.

‘To differ from you gives me keen pain.’

TO JAMES TAYLOR, CORNHILL

‘
November
6
th
, 1850.

‘My dear Sir, — Mrs. Arnold seemed an amiable, and must once have been a very pretty, woman; her daughter I liked much.  There was present also a son of Chevalier Bunsen, with his wife, or rather bride.  I had not then read Dr. Arnold’s Life — otherwise, the visit would have interested me even more than it actually did.

‘Mr. Williams told me (if I mistake not) that you had recently visited the Lake Country.  I trust you enjoyed your
 
excursion, and that our English Lakes did not suffer too much by comparison in your memory with the Scottish Lochs. — I am, my dear sir, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Ambleside,
December
21
st
, 1850.

‘Dear Ellen, — I have managed to get off going to Sir J. K. Shuttleworth’s by a promise to come some other time.  I thought I really should like to spend two or three days with you before going home; therefore, if it is not inconvenient for you, I will come on Monday and stay till Thursday.  I shall be at Bradford (D.V.) at ten minutes past two, Monday afternoon, and can take a cab at the station forward to Birstall.  I have truly enjoyed my visit.  I have seen a good many people, and all have been so marvellously kind; not the least so the family of Dr. Arnold.  Miss Martineau I relish inexpressibly.  Sir James has been almost every day to take me a drive.  I begin to admit in my own mind that he is sincerely benignant to me.  I grieve to say he looks to me as if wasting away.  Lady Shuttleworth is ill.  She cannot go out, and I have not seen her.  Till we meet, good-bye.

‘C. Brontë.’

It was during this visit to Ambleside that Charlotte Brontë and Matthew Arnold met.

‘At seven,’ writes Mr. Arnold from Fox How (December 21, 1850), ‘came Miss Martineau and Miss Brontë (Jane Eyre); talked to Miss Martineau (who blasphemes frightfully) about the prospects of the Church of England, and, wretched man that I am, promised to go and see her cow-keeping miracles
  
to-morrow — I, who hardly know a cow from a sheep.  I talked to Miss Brontë (past thirty and plain, with expressive grey eyes, though) of her curates, of French novels, and her education in a school at Brussels, and sent the lions roaring to their dens at half-past nine, and came to talk to you.’ 
 

 
By the light of this ‘impression,’ it is not a little interesting to see what Miss Brontë, ‘past thirty and plain,’ thought of Mr. Matthew Arnold!

TO JAMES TAYLOR, CORNHILL,

‘
January
15
th
, 1851.

‘My dear Sir, — I fancy the imperfect way in which my last note was expressed must have led you into an error, and that you must have applied to Mrs. Arnold the remarks I intended for Miss Martineau.  I remember whilst writing about “my hostess” I was sensible to some obscurity in the term; permit me now to explain that it referred to Miss Martineau.

‘Mrs. Arnold is, indeed, as I judge from my own observations no less than from the unanimous testimony of all who really know her, a good and amiable woman, but the intellectual is not her forte, and she has no pretensions to power or completeness of character.  The same remark, I think, applies to her daughters.  You admire in them the kindliest feeling towards each other and their fellow-creatures, and they offer in their home circle a beautiful example of family unity, and of that refinement which is sure to spring thence; but when the conversation turns on literature or any subject that offers a test for the intellect, you usually felt that their opinions were rather imitative than original, rather sentimental than sound.  Those who have only seen Mrs. Arnold once will necessarily, I think, judge of her unfavourably; her manner on introduction disappointed me sensibly, as lacking that genuineness and simplicity one seemed to have a right to expect in the chosen life-companion of Dr. Arnold.  On my remarking as much to Mrs. Gaskell and Sir J. K. Shuttleworth, I was told for my consolation it was a “conventional manner,” but that it vanished on closer acquaintance; fortunately this last assurance proved true.  It is observable that Matthew Arnold, the eldest son, and the author of the volume of poems to which you allude, inherits his mother’s defect.  Striking and prepossessing in appearance, his manner displeases from its seeming foppery.  I own it caused me at first to regard him with regretful surprise; the
 
shade of Dr. Arnold seemed to me to frown on his young representative.  I was told, however, that “Mr. Arnold improved upon acquaintance.”  So it was: ere long a real modesty appeared under his assumed conceit, and some genuine intellectual aspirations, as well as high educational acquirements, displaced superficial affectations.  I was given to understand that his theological opinions were very vague and unsettled, and indeed he betrayed as much in the course of conversation.  Most unfortunate for him, doubtless, has been the untimely loss of his father.

‘My visit to Westmoreland has certainly done me good.  Physically, I was not ill before I went there, but my mind had undergone some painful laceration.  In the course of looking over my sister’s papers, mementos, and memoranda, that would have been nothing to others, conveyed for me so keen a sting.  Near at hand there was no means of lightening or effacing the sad impression by refreshing social intercourse; from my father, of course, my sole care was to conceal it — age demanding the same forbearance as infancy in the communication of grief.  Continuous solitude grew more than I could bear, and, to speak truth, I was glad of a change.  You will say that we ought to have power in ourselves either to bear circumstances or to bend them.  True, we should do our best to this end, but sometimes our best is unavailing.  However, I am better now, and most thankful for the respite.

‘The interest you so kindly express in my sister’s works touches me home.  Thank you for it, especially as I do not believe you would speak otherwise than sincerely.  The only notices that I have seen of the new edition of
Wuthering Heights
were those in the
Examiner
, the
Leader
, and the
Athenæum
.  That in the
Athenæum
somehow gave me pleasure: it is quiet but respectful — so I thought, at least.

‘You asked whether Miss Martineau made me a convert to mesmerism?  Scarcely; yet I heard miracles of its efficacy and could hardly discredit the whole of what was told me.  I even underwent a personal experiment; and though the result was not absolutely clear, it was inferred that in time I should prove an excellent subject.

 
‘The question of mesmerism will be discussed with little reserve, I believe, in a forthcoming work of Miss Martineau’s, and I have some painful anticipations of the manner in which other subjects, offering less legitimate ground for speculation, will be handled.

‘You mention the
Leader
; what do you think of it?  I have been asked to contribute; but though I respect the spirit of fairness and courtesy in which it is on the whole conducted, its principles on some points are such that I have hitherto shrunk from the thought of seeing my name in its columns.

‘Thanking you for your good wishes, — I am, my dear sir, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO MISS LÆTITIA WHEELWRIGHT

‘Haworth,
January
12
th
, 1851.

‘Dear Lætitia, — A spare moment must and shall be made for you, no matter how many letters I have to write (and just now there is an influx).  In reply to your kind inquiries, I have to say that my stay in London and excursion to Scotland did me good — much good at the time; but my health was again somewhat sharply tried at the close of autumn, and I lost in some days of indisposition the additional flesh and strength I had previously gained.  This resulted from the painful task of looking over letters and papers belonging to my sisters.  Many little mementos and memoranda conspired to make an impression inexpressibly sad, which solitude deepened and fostered till I grew ill.  A brief trip to Westmoreland has, however, I am thankful to say, revived me again, and the circumstance of papa being just now in good health and spirits gives me many causes for gratitude.  When we have but one precious thing left we think much of it.