Brontës (144 page)

Almost despite herself, the change of air and scene at Filey did Charlotte good. During the last two weeks her health improved dramatically and she seems to have thrown off the last of the lingering ill effects of the mercury poisoning. Consequently her spirits also improved, though her work ‘stood obstinately still': ‘certainly a torpid liver makes torpid brains:' she told Miss Wooler, ‘no spirit moves me'. She had, however, learnt to be philosophical. ‘My
labours
as you call them', she informed Ellen who was also anxiously enquiring as to her progress, ‘stand in abeyance and I cannot hurry them – I must take my own time – however long that time may be.'
³⁵

She returned home at the end of June to find that Martha had carried out the annual spring clean in her absence and that the local painter, John Hudson, had painted all the windows, gates, doors, waterspouts and water-tubs:
³⁶
the parsonage therefore looked bright and clean inside and out. Everyone was well and there was even an amusing letter from Miss Martineau waiting for her which described how she had received a visitation from Joe Taylor and his family at Ambleside under the plea of being Charlotte's friends. Charlotte could not decide whether to be annoyed at
Joe's presumption and inconsistency – he having railed against Lord John Manners and Mr Smythe for their ‘insolence' in calling on Charlotte on a similar plea – or to laugh at Harriet Martineau's assessment of the little party. ‘She terms A. “a tranquil little Dutchwoman.'”, Charlotte relayed to Ellen. ‘Joe's organ of combativeness and contradiction amused and amazed her: she liked the baby best of the lot.'
³⁷

The little girl, Emily Martha, born the previous autumn, had been the subject of immense parental anxiety as she had been weak and sickly from birth. Perhaps because she cried at every new face, she was known as ‘Tim', short for ‘Timon', the misanthrope.
³⁸
Charlotte's sympathy had been stretched to breaking point by Amelia's understandable obsession with her child and her frequent outpourings of woe on its behalf. Exasperation – ‘I have had many little notes (whereof I answer about 1 in three) … Self & Child the sole all absorbing topics' – was mingled with sarcasm: ‘I don't know what that dear Mrs Joe T— will make of \her/ little one in the end: between port-wine and calomel and Mr Bennet and Mr Anderson – I should not like to be in its socks.'
³⁹
When the baby was subjected to a rigorous water treatment to restore its health, even Patrick was driven to comment that ‘if that child dies – its parents ought to be tried for infanticide'!
⁴⁰
All this provided fruitful material for
Villette:
Ginevra Fanshawe (whose name was Amelia in Charlotte's original manuscript) became an obsessive mother, her letters on the subject of her son's childhood illnesses a ‘perfect shout of affliction' containing the accusation that Lucy Snowe did not know ‘what it was to be a mother'. These echoed Amelia's own cry to Ellen: ‘You never were a Mother', which Charlotte tartly described as ‘really theatrical and entirely superfluous'.
⁴¹
However irritating Amelia's weakness might be in real life, it provided splendid fodder for Charlotte's fiction.

For a couple of weeks after her return, Charlotte worked steadily at the second volume of
Villette
, but before she could get fully into the flow of writing again, Patrick suffered a minor stroke.

He was suddenly attacked with acute inflammation of the eye. Mr Ruddock was sent for and after he had examined him – he called me into another room, and said that Papa's pulse was bounding at 150 per minute – that there was a strong pressure of blood on the brain – that in short the symptoms were decidedly apoplectic –

‘Active measures' were taken and, by the next day, Patrick's pulse had been
reduced to ninety. The partial paralysis which had also afflicted him disappeared completely within a couple of days, but his eye remained badly inflamed for nearly a month. This was a cause of acute anxiety to him as his worst fear was that he might again lose his sight. His spirits varied, sinking badly whenever he suffered any sort of relapse, and then he became short-tempered and irritable.
⁴²

The stroke could hardly have come at a worse time from Patrick's point of view, occurring only a few days before the arrival in Haworth of William Ranger, another inspector from the General Board of Health. He had been sent in response to a petition, got up by Richard Shackleton Butterfield, and signed by the leading inhabitants and property owners in the township, alleging malpractice in the elections to the local Board of Health which had recommended the improvements to the water supply. Confined to bed, Patrick could not make his representations to the inspector, who, falling prey to the self-interest of the agitators, recommended that the property qualification for election to the local board should be raised from five to ten pounds – a move that, as Patrick pointed out – would disenfranchise all but ten houses in the township, five of them inns. It would also, of course, prevent the improvements being carried through, as the property owners were unwilling to bear the extra costs on their water rates. It was not surprising that Patrick and Charlotte had been pleased at Butterfield's defeat in the courts over his striking workmen.
⁴³
The whole sorry saga would drag on and the poor would continue to die of preventable disease for a further six years.

The stress of this affair had probably contributed to Patrick's stroke. Once again, Charlotte found herself trying to write a book while nursing her father. Not surprisingly, the ‘severe shock' and anxiety caused by this sudden and unexpected proof of her father's frailty brought on a bout of Charlotte's sick headaches. Nevertheless, she managed, with the help of Martha in the house and Arthur Bell Nicholls in the parish. By the end of August Patrick's excellent constitution had prevailed and he was looking forward to taking up his duties once more.
⁴⁴

The second volume of
Villette
progressed slowly. A solicitous letter from George Smith, enquiring after her father's health and sending a copy of the new single-volume edition of
Shirley
, produced an unusually subdued response. Without any of the flippant references to the ‘Man-of-business' which she would once have made, she somewhat wearily lectured him on over-working. On the new edition she could only manage an elliptical
‘“Shirley” looks very respectable in her new attire', instead of her usual profuse wishes for her publishers to profit by its success.
⁴⁵

Only a guarded letter from Ellen, who was still in Sussex and, as usual, reading more into the attentions of Mary Gorham's brother than was probably intended, succeeded in provoking Charlotte to a passionate outburst.

Perhaps you think that as I generally write with some reserve – you ought to do the same.
My
reserve, however, has its foundation not in design, but in necessity – I am silent because I have literally
nothing to say
. I might indeed repeat over and over again that my life is a pale blank and often a very weary burden – and that the Future sometimes appals me – but what end could be answered by such repetition except to weary you and enervate myself?

The evils that now and then wring a groan from my heart – lie in position – not that I am a
single
woman and likely to remain a
single
woman – but because I am a
lonely
woman and likely to be
lonely
. But it cannot be helped and therefore
imperatively must be borne
– and borne too with as few words about it as may be.
⁴⁶

A month later, on the fourth anniversary of Branwell's death, she wrote miserably to Ellen, wishing that she could invite her to Haworth but knowing that she should not do so until her work was finished: ‘But oh Nell! I don't get on – I feel fettered – incapable – sometimes very low.' Her liver was playing her up again, ‘it hinders me in working – depresses both power and tone of feeling', and even the death of the family hero, the Duke of Wellington, at the grand old age of eighty-three, failed to rouse her to any expression of grief.
⁴⁷

Despite the fact that her depression was gradually bringing her work to a grinding halt, Charlotte persevered in her refusal to go from home. Miss Wooler had written in response to a suggestion from Charlotte earlier in the year that she might join her former headmistress at Scarborough in the autumn. ‘It would be pleasant at the seaside this fine warm weather,' Charlotte replied wistfully, ‘and I should dearly like to be there with you; to such a treat, however, I do not now look forward at all.'
⁴⁸
A month later, William Forster and his wife ‘made another of their sudden calls here', bringing with them a Miss Dixon, who turned out to be a distant relative of Charlotte's friends from Brussels. They tried to carry Charlotte back with them to Rawdon but this was one invitation she had no difficulty in refusing.
⁴⁹

At the beginning of October, Ellen returned home, having spent over four months with the Gorhams in Sussex, more than half that time after the marriage and departure on honeymoon of her friend. If, as seems likely from mysterious allusions such as to her visit bringing ‘future benefit in more ways than one', Ellen had hoped that Mary's brother would propose to her, she was once again to be disappointed.
⁵⁰
Hers was a classic case of always the bridesmaid, never the blushing bride.

Ellen's return to Yorkshire after such a long absence made it impossible for Charlotte to resist her longing to see her old friend again. Fortunately, her father was so concerned about her ailing health and spirits that he urged her to invite Ellen to stay, so she was able to lay the blame for breaking her resolution squarely on him. ‘Papa expresses so strong a wish that I should ask you to come', she began her letter to Ellen, ‘and I feel some little refreshment so absolutely necessary myself that I really must beg you to come to Haworth for one single week.' Somewhat ruefully, she added, ‘I thought I would persist in denying myself till I had done my work – but I find it won't do – the matter refuses to progress – and this excessive solitude presses too heavily – So let me see your dear face Nell just for one reviving week.'
⁵¹

Ellen arrived at Haworth on 15 October and stayed, as Charlotte had insisted, ‘one little week'. She brought with her a good-sized parcel from Miss Wooler which, on opening, Charlotte was delighted to find contained some winter chemises. The gift could not have been more opportune, as Charlotte stood in urgent need of them and had been too preoccupied with her work to buy or make new ones herself. The immediate lifting of her spirits which Ellen's companionship always brought was apparent in her chatty letter to Miss Wooler thanking her for the gift. Nevertheless, she pointed out, she had not allowed Ellen to stay longer than was necessary. ‘I would not have her any longer – for I am disgusted with myself and my delays – and consider it was a weak yielding to temptation in me to send for her at all – but in truth my spirits were getting low – prostrate sometimes and she has done me inexpressible good'.
⁵²

That good was self-evident. The day after Ellen's departure, Charlotte ‘fell to business' and cracked on with her work. Three days later, with ‘the welcome mood still … decently existent, and my eyes consequently excessively tired with scribbling', she scrawled a note to Ellen and another to Williams. The latter was so unusually brief and almost peremptory in tone that it is worth quoting in full.

Octbr 26 1852

My dear Sir

In sending a return-box of books to Cornhill – I take the opportunity of enclosing 2 Vols of M.S. the third Vol. is now so near completion that I trust, if all be well, I may calculate on its being ready in the course of two or three weeks. My wish is that the book should be published without Author's name.

I shall feel obliged if you will intimate the safe arrival of the Manuscript –

Believe me

Yours Sincerely

C Brontë

W. S. Williams Esqr.
⁵³

The abruptness of this note cannot simply be explained away by the fact that Charlotte was tired after several days of continuous writing – she had, after all, managed a lengthier and inconsequential letter to Ellen the same day. The absence of all her former friendliness and, indeed, sense of intimacy, suggests rather that Charlotte had taken offence at Williams' long silence. Unless the letters are missing, it would seem he had not written to her since July, and then only in response to a letter from her asking him questions which needed replies. Prior to that, Charlotte's last letters written in her old friendly style dated as far back as the beginning of April. Charlotte seems to have persuaded herself that the cessation of the correspondence was an expression of Cornhill's ‘bitter disappointment' at her failure to produce a new book that season.
⁵⁴

Charlotte's demand for anonymity in the publication of her next work was understandable but naive. Smith, Elder & Co. might have been prepared to offer this to Harriet Martineau, who had not published a novel for over twelve years, but it was hardly to be expected that they would do the same for the eagerly awaited new work by Currer Bell. Indeed, they were counting on the announcements to achieve large sales. Williams was concerned enough about this request to take the letter to his employer and it was George Smith himself who replied to Charlotte, forcefully putting the publisher's point of view. To him, Charlotte was prepared to be more conciliatory and to reveal the anxiety which lay behind her request.