Brontës (119 page)

At this crisis, Charlotte turned, not to Ellen Nussey, her friend since childhood and the only person outside the Brontë household who had ever got close to Emily, but to William Smith Williams. She wrote to him the day after Emily's death, a letter that was all the more poignant for its brevity and simple dignity.

My dear Sir

When I wrote in such haste to Dr Epps, disease was making rapid strides, nor has it lingered since, the gallopping consumption has merited its name – neither physician nor medicine are needed more. Tuesday night and morning saw the last hours, the last agonies, proudly endured till the end. Yesterday Emily Jane Brontë died in the arms of those who loved her.

Thus the strange dispensation is completed – it is incomprehensible as yet to mortal intelligence. The last thre[e] months – ever since my brother's death seem to us like a long, terrible dream. We look for support to God – and thus far he mercifully enables us to maintain our self-control in the midst of affliction whose bitterness none could have calculated on –

Believe me yours sincerely

C Brontë

Wednesday
²⁹

The following day Williams wrote back in shock and sorrow to offer his comfort. This appears to be his only extant letter to Charlotte, and it reveals clearly why she turned to him for sympathy and encouragement at this point and at other crises in her life.

London 21st Dec /48

How to address you, my Dear Madam, on this distressing occasion I know not. To describe the astonishment & pain that the mournful intelligence has caused me, & the deep concern at the loss to her family & to the world of your gifted sister Emily, which Mr Smith shares with me, is beyond my power. We feel for you & for your surviving – oh! what a world of sadness there is in that word! – your only sister, & for your bereaved father, & would fain shew our sympathy in other ways than words, if we knew how …

To mitigate your grief for such a loss, the only way is to think of the gain to her who has been taken from you, & of the duties that now devolve upon you
to support your bereaved father & comfort your sister & be comforted by her. But how superfluous it is of me to remind you of the duties that your strong sense of rectitude & energy of will prompt you to perform, and which only bodily weakness – and may God give you strength to bear this heavy affliction! – can prevent you from fulfilling. And when after the first dread shock of losing one who was your other self has passed off, & left your mind calm enough to reflect with serene sorrowful contemplation on the great and good qualities of her who is now a memory of the past and a hope for the future, you cannot but find sweet consolation in recalling those noble traits of character & high intelligence for which she was distinguished: for she being dead yet liveth & speaketh. It has often occurred to me that if it were possible for us to think of our departed relatives & friends \
only
/ as if they were only removed to a brighter world and a purer sphere, and could dwell upon our recollections of them without the disturbing medium of grief, how much more grateful & vivid, & ennobling would our regard & esteem for them be …

Great griefs are life-lasting ‘tis true; but their influences are as refreshing and beneficial to the soul as the night to the earth, & sleep to the body. May your night of sorrow be brief & relieved by the blessed rays of consolation that no grief is devoid of, and may the morning of peace & resignation dawn upon you both with the refreshing serenity of hopeful and affectionate feelings. You and your sister must be more & more endeared to each other now that you are left alone on earth, and having the same hopes, & sorrows, & pursuits, your sympathies will be more & more \closely/ entwined.

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: