Brontës (149 page)

With the acknowledged success of
Villette
, something of the old spirit of her correspondence with George Smith revived. ‘On the whole the critique I like best yet is the one I got at an early stage of the work, before it had undergone the “Old Bailey”; being the observations of a respected amateur critic – one A. Frazer Esqre.', she wrote to him, teasing him with the name he had assumed for their visit to the phrenologist in 1851. ‘I am bound to admit however that this gentleman confined his approving remarks to the 2 first vols., tacitly condemning the 3rd by the severity of a prolonged silence.'
⁵

Towards the end of February a parcel arrived from Cornhill containing a framed engraving of Samuel Lawrence's portrait of Thackeray, the original of which Mrs Smith had taken Charlotte to see in the artist's studio the previous month. It was a typically thoughtful gift from the young publisher, but knowing his distaste for effusive thanks, Charlotte gave him what she knew he would appreciate most, a spirited account of its receipt. ‘At a late hour yesterday evening –', she told him, in mock-grandiose terms, ‘I had the honour of receiving, at Haworth Parsonage a distinguished guest – none other than W.M. Thackeray Esqre. Mindful of the rites of hospitality – I hung him in state this morning. He looks superb in his beautiful, tasteful gilded gibbet.'
⁶

Another letter, requesting information as to the fate of Monsieur Paul Emanuel, prompted an equally satirical reply. Every reader should settle the catastrophe for himself, Charlotte firmly told George Smith:

(Drowning and Matrimony are the fearful alternatives) The Merciful – like Miss Mulock, Mr Williams, Lady Harriet St Clair and Mr Alexander Frazer – will of course choose the former and milder doom – drown him to put him out of pain. The cruel-hearted will on the contrary pitilessly impale him on the second horn of the dilemma – marrying him without ruth or compunction to that – person – that – that – individual – ‘Lucy Snowe'
⁷

The question was one that had intrigued many of
Villette's
readers and Charlotte had received several requests for a definitive answer. ‘You see how
much the ladies think of this little man whom you none of you like', she playfully accused Williams.

I had a letter the other day announcing that a lady of some note who had always determined that whenever she married, her elect should be the counterpart of Mr Knightley in Miss Austen's ‘Emma' – had now changed her mind and vowed that she would either find the duplicate of Professor Emanuel or remain for ever single!!!
⁸

Charlotte herself told Mrs Gaskell that her original intention was that Paul Emanuel should drown at sea on his way back to marry Lucy Snowe; like Charlotte herself, Lucy would not get her man. However, her father (to whom she must have been reading the manuscript) had pleaded so anxiously for a ‘happy ending' because he disliked books that left a melancholy impression on the mind, that she had felt obliged to defer at least in part to his wishes. Unable to alter her own vision of his fate, she had veiled it in the oracular terms which so fascinated her readers. To their anxious queries, she responded equally enigmatically. ‘Since the little puzzle amuses the ladies it would be a pity to spoil their sport by giving them the key', she told Williams.
⁹
In the general bonhomie that accompanied the publication of
Villette
, Charlotte's relations with Williams had also undergone something of a restoration to their former state. His task of sending her the reviews had given them a subject for discussion, and for the first time in well over a year she wrote at length and in a friendly fashion to him.
¹⁰

Had it not been for the increasingly difficult and unhappy situation at Haworth, Charlotte could well have rested on her laurels and got on with her life. As it was, the strain was becoming obvious even to outsiders. At the beginning of March, the township was graced with a rare visit from Dr Charles Longley, the diocesan bishop, who stayed overnight with the Brontës at the parsonage. ‘He is certainly a most charming little Bishop –', Charlotte reported of this future Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘the most benignant little gentleman that ever put on lawn sleeves – yet stately too, and quite competent to check encroachments.'
¹¹
This skill had been displayed during the evening when the curates, who had all been invited to tea and supper, began to ‘upbraid' Charlotte in their characteristically heavy-handed way for ‘putting them into a book'. Always anxious to keep her personal and authorial lives separate, Charlotte had been embarrassed and appealed to the bishop, who swiftly put the curates in their place. Dr
Longley was evidently impressed by his hostess: ‘She looks like a clever little boy', he wrote to his wife,

well-mannered, ready in conversation, just and sensible in her remarks which indicate thought and reflexion, active in her household duties, an excellent daughter her father assures me, without any of the abstract of genius. Without any fuss she was exceedingly attentive to my comfort, would go up to my room and stir the fire before I went up for my morning's writing after breakfast.
¹²

Inevitably, Arthur Nicholls was heavily involved in the arrangements and, with the other local parsons, was a constant presence in the house. Perhaps inevitably, too, flustered by the extra work and anxious that everything should go well, Charlotte was irritated by his hang-dog appearance. ‘Mr Nicholls demeaned himself not quite pleasantly –', she announced tartly to Ellen,

I thought he made no effort to struggle with his dejection but gave way to it in a manner to draw notice; the Bishop was obviously puzzled by it. Mr N— also shewed temper once or twice in speaking to Papa. Martha was beginning to tell me of certain ‘flaysome' looks also – but I desired not to hear of them … He dogged me up the lane after the evening service in no pleasant manner – he stopped also in the passage after the Bishop and the other clergy were gone into the room – and it was because I drew away and went upstairs that he gave that look which filled Martha's soul with horror. She – it seems – meantime, was making it her business to watch him from the kitchen-door –

When Mr Nicholls also got into a needless quarrel with the school inspector who followed hard on the bishop's heels, Charlotte lost all patience. ‘The fact is I shall be most thankful when he is well away – I pity him – but I don't like that dark gloom of his … If Mr N— be a good man at bottom – it is a sad thing that Nature has not given him the faculty to put goodness into a more attractive form'.
¹³
To his eternal credit, the bishop soon perceived the cause of the curate's dejection and, sympathizing with his very evident misery, made a point of pressing his hand and speaking kindly to him on parting. Despite Mr Nicholls, the visit passed ‘off'capitally well', the bishop declaring himself ‘thoroughly gratified with all he had seen' and Charlotte's reactive headache and bilious attack politely awaiting his departure before putting in their appearance.
¹⁴

For several weeks after the bishop's visit, the parsonage was in constant turmoil with a stream of visitors. William Morgan made a welcome return to Bradford to preach at his old church, but his threatened visit to Haworth – ‘the infliction' as Charlotte called it – did not materialize.
¹⁵
Nevertheless, in his next letter he informed the Brontës that he had ‘lately found his way to Cornhill'.

He writes that he had a ‘long and interesting conversation' with one of my publishers, but does not say whether it was Mr Williams or Mr Smith – and that it was suggested that the ‘French phrases' in ‘Villette' – about which the worthy old gentleman has already several times expressed himself a good deal disturbed – shall be translated in foot-notes in a new edition.
¹⁶

Reporting this back to Williams, Charlotte sardonically remarked, ‘I can't say that this suggestion quite meets my ideas', but as the future editions of
Villette
were printed untranslated, one can only presume that Mr Morgan heard what he wanted to hear.

At Easter, Charlotte was too busy with parish affairs to consider a visit to Brookroyd; there were ‘Sermons to be preached, parsons to be entertained. Mechanics' Institute Meetings and tea-drinkings to be solemnized'. William Cartman came over from Skipton to preach the afternoon and evening sermons on Easter Sunday. The following day it was the annual soiree of the Haworth Mechanics' Institute; there was the usual ‘respectable' teaparty in the church schoolroom, at which the guests were entertained by the Haworth Choral Society, and Patrick gave one of the speeches.
¹⁷

The bustle and activity in Haworth failed to revive Mr Nicholls' spirits. His uncertainty as to Charlotte's feelings towards him, which had been so evident during the bishop's visit, had finally led him to abandon the idea of becoming a missionary. Emigrating to Australia was simply too final a solution and one which would pre-empt any possibility of a change in Charlotte's attitude towards him. On 1 April 1853, he withdrew his application, citing his continuing rheumatic problems as his justification, and sought another curacy instead.
¹⁸
Charlotte was almost in despair about him when she wrote to Ellen Nussey a few days later.

He & Papa never speak. He seems to pass a desolate life. He has allowed late circumstances so to act on him as to freeze up his manner and overcast his
countenance not only to those immediately concerned but to every one. He sits drearily in his rooms – If Mr Cartman or Mr Grant or any other clergyman calls to see and as they think to cheer him – he scarcely speaks – I find he tells them nothing – seeks no confidant – rebuffs all attempts to penetrate his mind – I own I respect him for this – He still lets Flossy go to his rooms and takes him to walk – He still goes over to see Mr Sowden some times – and poor fellow – that is all. He looks ill and miserable. I think and trust in Heaven he will be better as soon as he fairly gets away from Haworth. I pity him inexpressibly. We never meet nor speak – nor dare I look at him – silent pity is just all I can give him – and as he knows nothing about that – it does not comfort. He is now grown so gloomy and reserved – that nobody seems to like him – his fellow-curates shun trouble in that shape – the lower orders dislike it – Papa has a perfect antipathy to him – and he – I fear – to Papa – Martha hates him – I think he might almost be
dying
and they would not speak a friendly word to or of him. How much of all this he deserves I can't tell – certainly he never was agreeable or amiable – and is less so now than ever – and alas! I do not know him well enough to be sure that there is truth and true affection – or only rancour and corroding disappointment at the bottom of his chagrin. In this state of things I must be and I am –
entirely passive
. I may be losing the purest gem – and to me far the most precious – life can give – genuine attachment – or I may be escaping the yoke of a morose temper – In this doubt conscience will not suffer me to take one step in opposition to Papas will – blended as that will is with the most bitter and unreasonable prejudices. So I just leave the matter where we must leave all important matters.
¹⁹

Faced with the prospect of two more months of Mr Nicholls' unremitting gloom before his employment terminated and he could leave Haworth, Charlotte fled. She had had a standing invitation to visit the Gaskells at Manchester since February and this she now accepted, arriving by train in the early evening of 22 April.
²⁰

The visit was not an entire success. Even before she arrived, she had been stricken with nerves at the thought of meeting the Gaskell children again. ‘Whenever I see Florence & Julia again – I shall feel like a fond but bashful suitor who views at a distance the fair personage to whom – in his clownish awe – he dare not risk a near approach', she had written to Mrs Gaskell the previous year. ‘Such is the clearest idea I can give you of my feeling towards children I like but to whom I am a stranger – and to what children am I not a stranger?'
²¹
It was a shock to discover that there
was a genuine stranger, a young lady, staying with the Gaskells, a fact which reduced her (and the other guest) to an uncomfortable silence. Matters were made worse when Charlotte retired to her room and found a letter from Ellen Nussey, repeating a lurid story about a ghost which was supposed to haunt a house she was about to visit. The story so preyed on Charlotte's mind that she spent a sleepless night and paid for this, and her nerves, with one of her sick headaches the following day.
²²

Mrs Gaskell tried hard to please her difficult guest. She invited a group of friends one evening, among them the Winkworth sisters, who sang Scottish ballads ‘exquisitely'.

Miss Brontë had been sitting quiet and constrained till they began ‘The Bonnie House of Airlie,' but the effect of that and ‘Carlisle Yetts,' which followed, was as irresistible as the playing of the Piper of Hamelin. The beautiful clear light came into her eyes; her lips quivered with emotion; she forgot herself, rose, and crossed the room to the piano, where she asked eagerly for song after song. The sisters begged her to come and see them the next morning, when they would sing as long as ever she liked; and she promised gladly and thankfully. But on reaching the house her courage failed. We walked some time up and down the street; she upbraiding herself all the while for folly, and trying to dwell on the sweet echoes in her memory rather than on the thought of a third sister who would have to be faced if we went in. But it was of no use …
²³