Ten Novels And Their Authors (31 page)

The hardships and loneliness of life at the parsonage have been made too much of. The talented sisters seem to have been quite satisfied with it; and indeed, if they ever stopped to consider their father’s origin, they may well have thought themselves far from unlucky. They
were neither better nor worse off than hundreds of parsons’ daughters all over England whose lives were as isolated and whose means as limited. The Brontës had neighbours, clergymen within walking distance, gentry, mill-owners and manufacturers in a small way, with whom they might have consorted; and if they lived secluded lives it was by choice. They were not rich, but neither were they poor. Mr. Brontë’s benefice provided him with a house and two hundred pounds a year, his wife had fifty pounds a year which, on her death, he presumably inherited, and Elizabeth Branwell, when she came to live at Haworth, brought her fifty pounds a year with her. The household thus had three hundred pounds a year to dispose of, which at that time was worth at least twelve hundred pounds now. Many a clergyman to-day, even with income-tax as it is, would look upon such a sum as riches. Many a clergyman’s wife to-day would be thankful to have one maid: the Brontës generally had two, and whenever there was pressure of work, girls were brought in from the village to help.

In 1824 Mr. Brontë took his four elder daughters to a school at Cowan Bridge. It had been recently established to give an education to the daughters of poor clergymen. The place was unhealthy, the food bad and the administration incompetent. The two elder girls died, and Charlotte and Emily, whose health was affected, were, though strangely enough only after another term, removed. Such schooling as they got, from then on, seems to have been given them by their aunt. Mr. Brontë thought more of his son than of the three girls and, indeed, Branwell was looked upon as the clever one of the family. Mr. Brontë would not send him to school, but undertook his education himself. The boy had a precocious talent, and his manners were engaging. His friend, F. H. Grundy, thus describes him: ‘He was insignificantly small – one of his life’s trials. He had a mass of red hair, which he wore brushed high off his forehead – to help his height, I fancy
– a great, bumpy, intellectual forehead, nearly half the size of the whole facial contour; small ferrety eyes, deep sunk and still further hidden by the never removed spectacles, prominent nose, but weak lower features. He had a downcast look, which never varied, save for a rapid momentary glance at long intervals. Small and thin of person, he was the reverse of attractive at first sight.’ He had parts, and his sisters admired him and expected him to do great things. He was a brilliant, eager talker, and from some Irish ancestor, for his father was a morose, silent man, he had inherited a gift for social intercourse and an agreeable loquacity. When a traveller, putting up for the night at the Black Bull, seemed lonely, the landlord would ask him: ‘Do you want someone to help you with your bottle, sir? if so, I’ll send up for Patrick.’ Branwell was always glad to be of service. I should add that when, years later, Charlotte Brontë then being famous, the landlord was asked about this, he denied that he had ever done anything of the kind: ‘Branwell,’ he said, ‘never needed to be sent for.’ You are still shown at Haworth the room at the Black Bull, with its Windsor chairs, in which Branwell tippled with his friends.

When Charlotte was just under sixteen, she went to school once more, this time at Roe Head, and was happy there; but after a year she came home again to teach her two younger sisters. Though the family, as I have pointed out, were not so poor as has been made out, the girls had nothing to look forward to. Mr. Brontë’s stipend would naturally cease at his death, and Miss Branwell was leaving the little money she had to her amusing nephew; they decided, therefore, that the only way they could earn a living was by training themselves to be governesses or school-mistresses. At that time there was no other calling open to women who looked upon themselves as ladies. Branwell, by now, was eighteen and a decision had to be made on what trade or profession he was to adopt. He had some facility for drawing, as his sisters had too, and
he was eager to become a painter. It was settled that he should go to London and study at the Royal Academy. He went, but nothing came of the project, and after a while, which he spent in sightseeing and presumably having as good a time as he could, he returned to Haworth. He tried writing, but with no success; then he persuaded his father to set him up in a studio in Bradford where he might earn a living by painting portraits of the local people; but this failed too, and Mr. Brontë called him home. Then he became tutor to a Mr. Postlethwaite at Barrow-in-Furness. He seems to have done well enough there, but, for reasons unknown, after six months Mr. Brontë brought him back to Haworth. Presently, a job was found for him as clerk-in-charge at the station of Sowerby Bridge on the Leeds and Manchester Railway, and later at Luddenden Foot. He was bored and lonely, he drank too much, and eventually was discharged for gross neglect of his duties. Meanwhile, in 1835, Charlotte had returned to Roe Head as a teacher, and taken Emily with her as a pupil. But Emily became so desperately homesick that she fell ill, and had to be sent home. Anne, who was of a calmer, more submissive temper, took her place. Charlotte held her job for three years, at the end of which, her health failing, she too went home.

She was twenty-two. Branwell was not only a source of worry, but a source of expense; and Charlotte, as soon as she was well enough, felt herself obliged to take a situation as a nursery governess. It was not work she liked. Neither she nor her sisters liked children, any more than their father did. ‘I find it so hard to repel the rude familiarity of children,’ she wrote to Ellen Nussey. She hated to be in a dependent position, and was continually on the look-out for affronts. She was not an easy person to get on with and, so far as one can judge from her letters, seems to have expected to be asked to do as a favour what her employers quite naturally thought they could demand as a right. She left after three months and returned to the
parsonage, but some two years later took another situation with a Mr. and Mrs. White at Rawdon, near Bradford. Charlotte did not think them refined. ‘Well can I believe that Mrs. W. has been an exciseman’s daughter, and I am convinced also that Mr. W’s extraction is very low.’ She was, however, fairly happy in this place, but, as she wrote to the same intimate friend: ‘No one but myself can tell how hard a governess’s life is to me – for no one but myself is aware how utterly averse my whole mind and nature are for the employment.’ She had long been toying with the idea of keeping a school of her own, with her two sisters, and now she took it up again; the Whites, who seem to have been very kind, decent people, encouraged her, but suggested that before she could hope to be successful she must acquire certain qualifications. Though she could read French, she could not speak it, and knew no German, so she decided that she must go abroad to learn languages. Miss Branwell was persuaded to advance money for the cost of this; and then Charlotte and Emily, with Mr. Brontë to look after them on the journey, set out for Brussels. The two girls, Charlotte being then twenty-six, Emily twenty-two, became pupils at the Pensionnat Héger. After ten months they were recalled to England by the illness of Miss Branwell. She died, and having disinherited Branwell, owing to his bad behaviour, left the little she had to her nieces. It was enough for them to carry out the plan they had so long discussed of having a school of their own; but since their father was old and his sight failing, they made up their minds to set it up at the parsonage. Charlotte did not think she was sufficiently equipped, and so accepted Monsieur Héger’s offer to go back to Brussels and teach English at his school. She spent a year there and on her return to Haworth the three sisters issued prospectuses, and Charlotte wrote to her friends asking them to recommend the school they intended to start. How they expected to house pupils in the parsonage, which had only four
bedrooms, all of which they occupied themselves, has never been explained, and as no pupils came it certainly never will be.

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They had been writing off and on since they were children, and in 1846 the three of them published a volume of verse at their own expense under the names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. It cost them fifty pounds, and two copies were sold. Each of them then wrote a novel. Charlotte’s (Currer Bell) was called
The Professor
, Emily’s (Ellis Bell)
Wuthering Heights
and Anne’s (Acton Bell)
Agnes Grey
. They were refused by publisher after publisher; but when Smith, Elder & Co., to whom Charlotte’s
The Professor
had finally been sent, returned it, they wrote to say that they would be glad to consider a longer novel by her. She was finishing one, and within a month was able to send it to the publishers. They accepted it. It was called
Jane Eyre
. Emily’s novel, and Anne’s, had also at last been accepted by a publisher, Newby by name, ‘on terms somewhat impoverishing to the two authors’, and they had corrected the proofs before Charlotte sent
Jane Eyre
to Smith, Elder & Co. Though the reviews of
Jane Eyre
were not particularly good, readers liked it and it became a best-seller. Mr. Newby, upon this, tried to persuade the public that
Wuthering Heights
and
Agnes Grey
, which he then published together in three volumes, were by the author of
Jane Eyre
. They made, however, no impression, and indeed were regarded by a number of critics as early and immature work by Currer Bell. Mr. Brontë had consented, after some persuasion, to read
Jane Eyre
. When he came in to tea, after finishing it, he said: ‘Girls, do you know Charlotte has been writing a book, and it is much better than likely?’

At the time of Miss Branwell’s death, Anne was in a situation at Thorpe Green as governess to the children of
a certain Mrs. Robinson. Her nature was sweet and gentle, and she was apparently better able to get on with people than the exacting and prickly Charlotte. She was not unhappy in her situation. She went back to Haworth for her aunt’s funeral, and on her return to Thorpe Green took with her Branwell, then idling at home, as tutor to Mrs. Robinson’s son. Mr. Edmund Robinson, a wealthy clergyman, was an elderly invalid with a youngish wife, and Branwell, though she was seventeen years older than he, fell in love with her. What their relations were is uncertain. Anyhow, whatever they were, they were discovered. Branwell was sent packing, and Mr. Robinson ordered him ‘never to see again the mother of his children, never set foot in her house, never write or speak to her.’ Branwell ‘stormed, raved, swore he could not live without her; cried out against her for staying with her husband. Then prayed the sick man might die soon; they would yet be happy.’ Branwell had always drunk too much; now in his distress he took to eating opium. It seems, however, that he was able to communicate with Mrs. Robinson, and, some months after his dismissal, they appear to have met at Harrogate. ‘It is said that she proposed flight together, ready to forfeit all her grandeur. It was Branwell who advised patience and a little longer waiting.’ Since this can only have been told by Branwell himself, and is in any case very unlikely to be true, we may accept it as an invention of a young man who was both silly and conceited. Suddenly he received a letter to announce the death of Mr. Robinson; ‘he fair danced down the churchyard as if he was out of his mind; he was so fond of that woman,’ someone told Mary Robinson, Emily’s biographer.

‘The next morning he rose, dressed himself with care and prepared for a journey; but before he had even set out from Haworth, two men came riding to the village posthaste. They sent for Branwell and when he arrived, in a great state of excitement, one of the riders dismounted
and went with him into the Black Bull.’ He brought a message from the widow begging him not to come near her again, for if she even saw him once she would lose her fortune and the custody of her children. This is what he told, but since the letter was never produced and it has been discovered that Mr. Robinson’s will contained no such clause, there is no knowing whether he told the truth. The only thing sure is that Mrs. Robinson let him know that she wanted to have nothing more to do with him, and it may be that she made up this excuse to render the blow less mortifying. The Brontë family were convinced that she had been Branwell’s mistress, and ascribed his consequent behaviour to her evil influence. It is possible that she was, but it is just as possible that, like many a man before and after him, he boasted of a conquest he had never made. But if she had been for a brief period infatuated with him, there is no reason to suppose that it had ever entered her head to marry him. He proceeded to drink himself to death. When he knew the end was near, one who attended him in his last illness told Mrs. Gaskell that, wanting to stand up to die, he insisted upon getting up. He had only been in bed a day. Charlotte was so upset that she had to be led away, but her father, Anne and Emily looked on while he rose to his feet and after a struggle that lasted twenty minutes died, as he wished, standing.

Emily never went out of doors after the Sunday following his death. She had a cold and a cough. It grew worse, and Charlotte wrote to Ellen Nussey: ‘I fear she has pain in the chest, and I sometimes catch a shortness in her breathing, when she has moved at all quickly. She looks very, very thin and pale. Her reserved nature causes me great uneasiness of mind. It is useless to question her; you get no answer. It is still more useless to recommend remedies; they are never adopted.’ A week or two later, Charlotte wrote to another friend: ‘I would fain hope that Emily is a little better this evening, but it is difficult to
ascertain this. She is a real stoic in illness; she neither seeks nor will accept sympathy. To put any questions, to offer any aid, is to annoy; she will not yield a step before pain or sickness till forced; not one of her ordinary avocations will she voluntarily renounce. You must look on and see her do what she is unfit to do, and not dare say a word …’ One morning Emily got up as usual, dressed herself and began to sew; she was short of breath and her eyes were glazed, but she went on working. She grew steadily worse. She had always refused to see a doctor, but at last, at midday, asked that one should be sent for. It was too late. At two she died.