Brontës (90 page)

I do not know whether you feel as I do Ellen – but there are times now when it appears to me as if all my ideas and feelings except a few friendships and affections are changed from what they used to be – something in me which used to be enthusiasm is tamed down and broken – I have fewer illusions – what I wish for now is active exertion – a stake in life – Haworth seems such a lonely, quiet spot, buried away from the world – I no longer regard myself as young, indeed, I shall soon be 28 – and it seems as if I ought to be working and braving the rough realities of the world as other people do – It is however my duty to restrain this feeling at present and I will endeavour to do so.
⁷⁶

Charlotte claimed that it was her wish to commence a school, as indeed everyone now expected her to do. She had sufficient money and qualifications for
the undertaking but, she asserted, there was now an insuperable barrier to her attaining the objective for which she had striven so long: her father's health.

I have felt for some months that I ought not to be away from him – and I feel now that it would be too selfish to leave him (at least so long as Branwell and Anne are absent) in order to pursue selfish interests of my own –
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Though this argument has been universally accepted by Charlotte's friends and biographers, it was disingenuous. It would obviously have been a greater comfort to Patrick to know that his children were all well placed to earn their livings for the foreseeable future than to have them unemployed at home and dependent on his own inadequate salary. The parsonage was comfortably run with the assistance of two loyal and reliable servants, Tabby Aykroyd and Martha Brown; more importantly, he had Emily to act as his housekeeper and, when necessary, as his amanuensis. There was no need for Charlotte to remain at home. Her father's ill health was simply a convenient excuse for her own depression of spirits and resultant lethargy which were the real reasons for her reluctance to make a new start.

There was then a tinge of envy in Charlotte's remark that Branwell and Anne, who had just returned to Thorp Green after the Christmas holidays, were both ‘wondrously valued' in their situations.
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In both cases, this had been achieved by hard work and at considerable personal cost. Branwell had found it extremely difficult to adapt to being a tutor again after the comparative independence of his post on the railway. On 30 March 1843, a few months into his new job, he had written a poem into his old Luddenden Foot notebook.

I sit this evening far away

From all I used to know

And \nought reminds my soul to/ day

\Of happy/ long ago

\Unwelcome/ cares \unthought of/ fears

Around my room arise

I seek for suns of former years,

But clouds oercast my skies

Yes – Memory where\fore/ does thy voice

Bring old times back to view

As Thou wouldst bid me not rejoice

In \thoughts/ and prospects new
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Branwell's uncertainties and unhappiness were probably compounded by the fact that he was in a new and strange place, cut off from all his old friends in Halifax. He was not even living under the same roof as his sister, having taken lodgings at the Old Hall, a seventeenth-century red brick house with a Dutch-style roof which seems to have been part of a working farm. The building was attractive enough for Branwell to draw it in pen and ink later that year.
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Initially, at least, Branwell was so miserable that he became ill. Patrick was deeply concerned and took the extraordinary step of visiting his son in March, when he had to be in York himself to give evidence at the Assizes in a notorious forgery case.
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Gradually, however, Branwell seems to have settled, helped, no doubt, by the Robinsons' obvious appreciation of his talents.

Anne, too, had had her difficulties which Branwell's proximity seems, in some measure, to have allayed. At the end of May she wrote a confident poem which forcefully rejected Calvinist dogma as uncharitable and irreligious and asserted her own belief in the then unfashionable idea of universal salvation.

You may rejoice to think yourselves secure

You may be grateful for the gift divine

That grace unsought which made your black hearts pure

And fits your earthborn souls in Heaven to shine

But is it sweet to look around and view

Thousands excluded from that happiness

Which they deserve at least as much as you

Their faults not greater nor their virtues less?
⁸²

Anne spent her holiday at home in June preparing a book of her favourite music to take back with her to Thorp Green. Significantly, her choice was dominated by religious pieces which she seems to have chosen as much for their sentiments as their tunes. Anne copied out words and music to thirty-two items, eight of them ballads, mostly of the ‘Ye banks and braes' variety,
but seventeen were hymns and a further seven were sacred songs.
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The month of July she again spent in Scarborough with the Robinsons, lodging this time at No. 14, The Cliff, while her employer's mother lodged at No. 4.
⁸⁴

Returning to Thorp Green at the beginning of August she seems to have been afflicted with religious uncertainty and loneliness once more. On 10 September 1843 she wrote an impassioned plea for stronger faith and the removal of the doubts which plagued her.
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This was followed by several poems reflecting her own homesickness. In ‘The Captive Dove', echoing a subject Emily had already treated, she took a totally different stance from her sister, begging not for freedom but for companionship in captivity. Though the poem almost certainly belongs to the Gondal cycle, it is interesting because it undoubtedly reflects Anne's own character: unlike Emily, who was selfish and single-minded in the pursuit of her liberty, Anne was prepared to accept her duty, however uncongenial, though she too longed for freedom.
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In November, as the Christmas holidays gradually came within sight, Anne was overwhelmed with homesickness. Well aware of the physical beauties and comforts of her residence, Anne still rejected them in favour of

my barren hills

Where colder breezes rise;

Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees

Can yield an answering swell,

But where a wilderness of heath

Returns the sound as well…

Restore to me that little spot,

With grey walls compassed round,

Where knotted grass neglected lies,

And weeds usurp the ground.

Though all around this mansion high

Invites the foot to roam,

And though its halls are fair within –

Oh, give me back my HOME!
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The Christmas holidays were a brief but welcome break in the now well-established routine of teaching at Thorp Green and there was the added
pleasure of seeing Charlotte for the first time for over a year, though her depressed state of mind cannot have passed unnoticed. Anne wrote a joyful poem on Christmas morning, celebrating the birth of Christ and the sound of bells floating on the breeze which heralded it.
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Returning to Thorp Green at the end of January, she again took up the Gondal story which seems to have preoccupied her during the previous autumn and inspired the poems of that period. She was also expanding her own academic horizons, apparently beginning to teach both German and elementary Latin to her pupils.
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Emily, too, was mentally absorbed in Gondal. In February 1844, she began to collect her poems together, extracting them from their prose tales going as far back as March 1837 and copying them out into one notebook which she entitled ‘Gondal Poems' and another which she left untitled. In fact, there was no hard and fast distinction between the two, for Emily does not appear to have stuck to her intention to include only personal poems in the second notebook.
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She would continue to copy her poems into the volumes until May 1848, suggesting that her obsession with Gondal continued right through the publication of
Poems
with her sisters in 1846 and
Wuthering Heights
in 1847.

Throughout 1844 she continued to produce a steady stream of poems following the fortunes of her imaginary heroes and heroines. The same characters continued to entrance her, from the unloved and embittered ‘foster-child of sore distress' who had featured in her earlier poems, to the wilful but greatly loved Augusta. Even the same subjects provided inspiration, particularly the parting of loved ones either by death or by finding themselves on opposing sides in war.
⁹¹
Though she may have been stuck in a rut, it was a fruitful one, inspiring some of her most lyrical poetry. The elegy by ‘E.W.' at the grave of Augusta is a typical example.

The linnet in the rocky dells,

The moor-lark in the air,

The bee among the heather bells

That hide my lady fair –

The wilddeer browse above her breast;

The wildbirds raise their brood,

And they, her smiles of love carest,

Have left her solitude!

I ween, that when the graves dark wall

Did first her form retain

They thought their hearts could ne'er recall

The light of joy again —

They thought the tide of greif would flow

Unchecked through future years

But where is all their anguish now,

And where are all their tears?

Well, let them fight for Honour's breath

Or Pleasure's shade pursue –

The Dweller in the land of Death

\Is/ changed and car [e] less too –

And if their eyes should watch and weep

Till sorrows' source were dry

She would not in her tranquil sleep

Return a single sigh –

Blow, west wind, by the lonely mound

And murmer, summer streams,

There is no need of other sounds

To soothe my Lady's dreams —
⁹²

Emily's dependence on Gondal had never faltered and even now, when there was nothing to disturb the equilibrium of her existence, when she was secure in her home and free to control her own destiny, she retreated into her imagination. Unlike Charlotte or Anne, for whom there was a certain desperation in clinging to Angrian and Gondal fantasy, for Emily it was neither a relief from, nor a frustration of, the daily routine: it was a necessary part of life. Emily's hymn to the imagination was an eloquent exposition of her own thoughts and feelings.

      thou art ever there to bring

The hovering visions back and breathe

New glories o'er the blighted spring

And call a lov[e]lier life from death

And whisper with a voice divine

Of real worlds as bright as thine

I trust not to thy phantom bliss

Yet still in evenings quiet hour

With Never failing thankfulness

I welcome thee benignant power

Sure solacer of human cares

And sweeten hope when hope dispairs —
⁹³

Though Emily lived in a world of her own there was, as usual, plenty going on in the township, with public performances of Haydn's
Creation
and Handel's
Samson
and
Judas Maccabeus
by the Haworth Quarterly Choral Society and lectures on every subject from medical botany to Chartism. One misfortune which must have affected the Brontës was the closing of Haworth subscription library, the sale of which was advertised by placard to take place on Easter Monday, 1844
⁹⁴
. July was a particularly busy month. On Friday, 19 July, before breaking up for the summer holidays, the pupils of the new Church National School were publicly examined in the Scriptures, history, geography, English grammar and arithmetic to the credit of their teachers and the general satisfaction of their patrons and parents. The Rands and some of the church trustees were invited to a celebratory tea at the parsonage afterwards.
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It was also announced that a new headmaster had been appointed for the Free Grammar School near Oxenhope: the Reverend Joseph Brett Grant, BA, an Oxford graduate, would replace the unfortunate Wesleyan, Mr Ramsbottom.
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An added benefit of the appointment as far as Patrick was concerned was that he would then have another clergyman in the township to call on when he needed assistance.

The Sunday after the public examinations, the Reverend Samuel Redhead, making his first visit to Haworth since he had been so rudely ejected over twenty years before, came to give the afternoon and evening sermons on behalf of the Church Sunday school. Redhead was accompanied by his son-in-law, the Reverend J. Hodgson Ramsbotham, and the pair would undoubtedly have had to be entertained and put up for the night at the parsonage before their return home to Calverley.
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On more secular affairs, Patrick chaired a meeting to discuss the growing problem of the scarcity of water in the township. It was agreed to set up a committee to look into the feasibility of bringing water from the only effective source of
supply, a spring at West End on the common. As far as Patrick was concerned, this was the start of a fourteen-year battle to improve the water supply and sanitary arrangements in Haworth. No doubt he was also involved in the meetings which were held to promote and investigate a possible railway link from Keighley up to Haworth, which would have made a considerable difference to the trade of the township.
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Throughout all this activity, Charlotte remained almost stupefied by low spirits. Only Ellen seemed able to rouse her to anything like her old self, inviting her over to Brookroyd for a couple of weeks in March, where she was pampered into feeling somewhat more lively. She returned bearing a gift of Sicilian Pea and crimson cornflower seeds from Ellen to Emily, only to find her sister grieving over the death of the family cat – an animal so pampered that it seemed to have lost a cat's nature and subsided into luxurious amiability and contentment. The sisters made the most of a spell of good weather by walking out frequently on the moors ‘to the great damage of our shoes but I hope to the benefit of our health'.
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