Brontës (74 page)

Charlotte could not restrain the bitterness that this sense of inadequacy engendered.

I have seen an ignorant nursery-maid who could scarcely read or write – by dint of an excellent, serviceable sanguine–phlegmatic temperament which made her at once cheerful and unmoveable; of a robust constitution and steady, unimpressionable nerves which kept her firm under shocks, and unharassed under annoyances – manage with comparative ease a large family of spoilt children, while their Governess lived amongst them a life of inexpressible misery; tyrannized over, finding her efforts to please and teach utterly vain, chagrined, distressed, worried – so badgered so trodden-on, that she ceased almost at last to know herself, and wondered in what despicable, trembling frame her oppressed mind was prisoned – and could not realize the idea of evermore being treated with respect and regarded with affection – till she finally resigned her situation and went away quite broken in spirit and reduced to the verge of decline in health.
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The nursery maid with the cheerful disposition and way with children was employed at Upperwood House.
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Three weeks into her new post, Charlotte was able to write fairly cheerfully to Ellen, though complaining of the amount of sewing she was expected to do and that, because the children occupied her fully during the day, she was obliged to do it in the evening.

this place is better than Stonegappe but God knows I have enough to do to keep a good heart on the matter – … Home-sickness afflicts me sorely – I like Mr White extremely – respecting Mrs White I am for the present silent – I am trying hard to like her. The children are not such little devils incarnate as the Sidgwicks – but they are over-indulged & at times hard to manage

Charlotte begged Ellen to visit her ‘if it be a breach of etiquette never mind if you can only stop an hour, come, –'. She concluded her letter by sending Ellen the ‘precious' Valentine William Weightman had sent her this year. ‘Make much of it –', she told Ellen,

remember the writer's blue eyes, auburn hair & rosy cheeks – you may consider the concern addressed to yourself – for I have no doubt he intended it to suit anybody –
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Ellen evidently decided that a visit might not be appropriate, writing instead to offer Charlotte the use of her brother George's gig to bring her over to Brookroyd for a short visit. The invitation inspired Charlotte with unwonted courage.

as soon as I had read your shabby little note – I gathered up my spirits directly – walked on the impulse of the moment into Mrs White's presence – popped the question – and for two minutes received no answer – will she refuse me when I work so hard for her? thought I Ye-es-es, drawled Madam – in a reluctant cold tone – thank you Ma'am said I with extreme cordiality, and was marching from the room – when she recalled me with – ‘You'd better go on Saturday afternoon then – when the children have holiday – & if you return in time for them to have all their lessons on Monday morning – I don't see that much will be lost' you are a genuine Turk thought I but again I assented & so the bargain was struck –
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While at Brookroyd Charlotte learnt that Mary Taylor had decided to emigrate with her brother, Waring, to Port Nicholson in the North Island of New Zealand. Unlike Charlotte, she was not prepared to buckle down to repellent and subservient employment and she did not lack the courage for the adventure of emigration. Her decision was typically matter of fact and pragmatic.

Mary has made up her mind she can not and will not be a governess, a teacher, a milliner, a bonnet-maker nor housemaid. She sees no means of obtaining employment she would like in England, so she is leaving it.
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Charlotte was undoubtedly envious of Mary's independence of spirit and the manner in which she refused to accept the conventional employments open to young women. The contrast with Charlotte's own circumstances seems to have aggravated her burgeoning sense of injustice at having to be at the beck and call of her employers. On her return from Brookroyd, she became markedly more truculent and less willing to please. Just as had happened with the Sidgwicks, she reserved most of her spleen for the lady of the house, to whom she was directly responsible and with whom she was in most contact. This was evident in the differing motives she ascribed to the Whites' displeasure that George Nussey, a ‘gentleman', had simply dropped Charlotte off at the gates and not brought her up to the house –
‘for which omission of his Mrs W was very near blowing me up – She went quite red in the face with vexation … for she is very touchy in the matter of opinion'. Mr White's reaction she ascribed, more charitably, to ‘regret … from more hospitable and kindly motives'.
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Writing to Ellen nearly a month after her visit, Charlotte expressed her dissatisfaction in a scornful attack on her employers' right to be her superiors. Conveniently, she overlooked the fact that she herself was the granddaughter of an Irish farmer and a Cornish shopkeeper and merchant.

During the last three weeks that hideous operation called ‘A Thorough Clean' has been going on in the house – it is now nearly completed for which I thank my stars – as during its progress I have fulfilled the twofold character of Nurse and Governess – while the nurse has been transmuted into Cook & housemaid. That nurse by the bye is the prettiest lass you ever saw & when dressed has much more the air of a lady than her Misstress. 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 – yet Mrs W— talks in an amusing strain of pomposity about his & her family & connexions & affects to look down with wondrous hauteur on the whole race of ‘Tradesfolk' as she terms men of business – I was beginning to think Mrs W— a good sort of body in spite of all her bouncing, and boasting –her bad grammar and worse orthography – but I have had experience of one little trait in her character which condemns her a long way with me – After treating a person on the most familiar terms of equality for a long time – … If any little thing goes wrong she does not scruple to give way to anger in a very coarse unladylike manner – though in justice no blame could be attached where she ascribed it all – I think passion is the true test of vulgarity or refinement – Mrs W— when put out of her way is highly offensive – She must not give me any more of the same sort – or I shall ask for my wages & go.
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Charlotte obviously found some comfort for her own wounded pride in attacking the supposed vulgarity of her employers, but she was being extremely unjust to them. The Whites went out of their way to make her happy. They expressed themselves ‘well satisfied' with their children's progress in learning since Charlotte's arrival. She was allowed at least one trip to Brookroyd and Ellen was invited to come to Upperwood to visit Charlotte there.
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Mr White even wrote to Haworth ‘entreating' Patrick to spend a week at Upperwood. This was an unheard-of kindness to a governess, which Charlotte ungratefully took it into her head to resent: ‘I don't
at all wish papa to come – it would be like incurring an obligation –'
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The fact that her job grew easier with time – to her evident surprise – wrung no concessions from her.

Somehow I have managed to get a good deal more control over the children lately – This makes my life a good deal easier – Also by dint of nursing the fat baby it has got to know me & be fond of me – occasionally I suspect myself of growing rather fond of it – but this suspicion clears away the moment its mamma takes it & makes a fool of it – from a bonny, rosy little morsel – it sinks in my estimation into a small, petted nuisance – Ditto with regard to the other children.
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Seemingly determined not to be pleased by her post, Charlotte made ineffectual attempts to find another. Like Jane Eyre, she was apparently offered a position in Ireland which, astonishingly, given her reluctance to be away from home and her refusal to be satisfied with a family as kind and well-meaning as the Whites, she seriously considered accepting.
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At the end of June, Charlotte again prevailed over Mrs White, persuading her to extend the holiday she was about to take from a week or ten days to a full three weeks. She arrived in Haworth on the evening of 30 June, only to discover that she had missed Anne who, having spent her own three weeks' holiday at home, had ‘gone back to “the Land of Egypt and the House of Bondage”'. Charlotte wasted no time in inviting Ellen over to stay, delaying the visit only when Aunt Branwell decided to go over to Cross Stone to nurse John Fennell, who was seriously ill. On the day Ellen had promised to come Charlotte and Emily ‘waited long – and anxiously' for her and Charlotte ‘quite wearied my eyes with watching from the window – eye-glass in hand and sometimes spectacles on nose'. Belatedly, they discovered that she had gone to stay with her brother, Henry at Earnley and her visit to Haworth had been cancelled.
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This was a disappointment but it did not spoil the pleasure of being back at home and learning all the family news.

Patrick had had a fraught spring. He had been summoned to a meeting at the vicarage in Bradford on 1 January, together with the other clergymen of the parish. Though the object of the meeting was not stated, it clearly augured further confrontation. Patrick took the opportunity to present a petition, addressed to Joseph Shackleton, Scoresby's collector of Easter dues in Haworth, acknowledging the vicar's right to the dues but appealing to his forbearance:

in consequence of the hard times & want of sufficient employment, we pray the Vicar to take our case into his kind consideration & if he pleases to remit, for this year what is due from us, we conscientiously declaring that we are at present unable to pay the same.

One hundred and sixty names then followed, each of them owing between 5s. 5d. and 9s. 5d., a sum which, in many cases, would be equivalent to a whole week's wages.
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The distress and poverty also gave John Winterbotham and his cohorts a genuine excuse to oppose the granting of a church rate in Bradford, which they did to great effect.
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A few weeks later, on hearing of the somewhat equivocal judgement in the Braintree case of contested church rates, which had been taken to the highest courts in the land, Patrick was prompted to write to the
Leeds Intelligencer
. While taking the opportunity to attack the Dissenters for what he considered their hidden agenda, the ultimate destruction of the Established Church, he made a heart-felt plea for new legislation:

well defined laws, which in their execution, would admit of but little or no grounds for litigation … Any law that brings or that would bring, the clergyman and his differing parishioners into annual collision, would be detrimental and wrong; and any law that would have a contrary effect, would be so far right.
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Less than two months later, he wrote again on the subject, this time to the
Bradford Observer
. For the first time, Patrick publicly aligned himself with the opposition to Dr Scoresby in Bradford.
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‘I do not, and never did like, the present mode of laying on Church-rates' he declared,

it appears to me, that when a new church is built in a large parish, and has, as it ought to have, a district assigned to it, there should be absolute independency there – so that, in no one instance, the parishioners should be answerable for any rate, but that which should be requisite for the repairs of their own church. As for the laying on two or three rates annually on any one district, to keep in repairs churches, it has nothing to do with; this is unreasonable and preposterous, and if there be laws which require it, they should, for the general good, be altered and amended, as soon as possible.
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Patrick had more cause than most to know the cost of this policy. For
historic, rather than equitable reasons, a fifth of Bradford's church rates came from Haworth – and the chapelry had to levy further rates to support its own church. Commutation was the obvious answer, Patrick believed, but he also attacked the Dissenters' claim that compulsory church rates were a violation of conscience. He illustrated his point with a neat little anecdote.

Not long since, I met with a man who objected to the payment of Church-rates, under the plea that to do so would violate the dictates of his conscience. Well knowing his circumstances, I said to him, ‘James, do you pay your rents without any such religious scruple?' ‘Yes,' said he, ‘I do, and why not?' ‘Do you know,' I observed, ‘that part of these rents go towards keeping beer shops, and part, I fear, towards upholding a gambling house?' ‘Yes,' he observed, with rather a downcast countenance, conjecturing, as I suppose, what I was after. ‘Well,' I remarked, ‘how can you conscientiously do this; do you really think, that even, according to your way of thinking, Church-rates would go to so bad a purpose?' He only observed – ‘I have been wrong, but I trust that, by Divine grace, I shall be right for the future, and that no one shall ever mislead me any more by false arguments.' He went home and I heard no more of his opposition to Church-rates.
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John Winterbotham was less easily convinced, but he agreed with Patrick's stance against the imposition of a parish rate in the chapelry. At the next church rate meeting in Bradford a few days later, he denounced the vicar and churchwardens for ‘the awful fact that they oppress and rob the poor of Haworth to furnish the Lord's Table at Bradford'. This was, he declared, an ‘act of religious delinquency' for which they ‘ought all to be deeply humbled before God'. Scoresby's answer was legally to enforce the collection of a rate by securing a requisition from the Ecclesiastical Court overturning the Haworth poll; the official document demanding payment of £76 12s 10d. in church rates to Bradford was backed by the threat of imprisonment for failure to pay.
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