The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte (6 page)

It was not until years later that I found them again, and they sit before me now as I write, silent witnesses to the tale I have just told and bringing back so clearly all the memories of that night and the temper I was in. Over the years I have heard many accounts about how the names were chosen – some of them very silly indeed – but I am now the only one who knows the truth of the matter, and that is why I have taken the bother to tell the full story.

Seeing the interest that there is in the family these days, Mr Nicholls has told me that probably I could sell these little pieces of paper for a lot of money. Perhaps I shall, for I am forced to live very carefully, but, for the moment at least, looking at them brings back such memories of the sisters and my own early days at the Parsonage that I cannot think of letting them go.

That year of 1845 meant so much to the family and me that I like to have some little mementoes of those times about me, especially as they serve to remind me of the other happenings that I had better get on and tell about.

[
] Every aspect of his new position and surroundings must have come as something of a cultural upheaval to Nicholls. This was his first curacy and, with little idea of what to expect, he seems to have been quite shocked at the cheerlessness of the Parsonage, his lodgings, and Haworth village. (Knowing what the Parsonage was like, I think it is safe to assume that Brown's house was even more undesirable: at least the outside privy at the former was a double-seater!)

Nicholls was a bright young man, only recently come from undergraduate life, and the civilization and delights of Dublin. There is no evidence that he had any sense of vocation, and it seems likely that, as with so many before and since, he entered the Church only because it presented the prospect of a secure and undemanding life. Now he was not at all happy with his surroundings, especially as the lack of professional people meant that he was without any congenial male company.

It was therefore almost inevitable that he should have been drawn to the opposite sex for solace and companionship and, as it would have been unthinkable for him to have been associated with any of the village girls, that he should have turned his attention to the Brontë sisters.

His first approaches were to Charlotte, and rumours about the couple were still going the rounds over a year later. Indeed, in 1846, Ellen Nussey actually asked Charlotte if it was true that she was engaged to Nicholls.

Charlotte's reply was scathing: ‘A cold far-away sort of civility are the only terms on which I have ever been with Mr Nicholls.' In that same letter, and still referring to curates, she stated that: ‘They regard me as an old maid, and I regard them,
one and all
, as highly uninteresting, narrow and unattractive specimens of the coarser sex.' The redolence of sour grapes is unmistakable, and perhaps smacks a little of the lady protesting too much.

She may very well have thought little of Nicholls a year before, but then she was still hoping against hope that something would come of her relationship with M. Héger. By 1846, however, the case was altered. She had been forced to the realization that there was no future for her with her erstwhile lover, and would have welcomed any overtures from her father's assistant. The trouble was that, by then, she was too late – he had turned his attentions elsewhere.

Maybe Nicholls first made a set at Charlotte because he detected her sensuality, and he may also have heard whispers about M. Héger. However, he does not appear to have been very distraught at being rebuffed, perhaps because Charlotte was not exactly a personable woman.

Instead – Martha tells us – he sought consolation with Emily, who was the only other daughter at home at that time. She was his age and, being the sort of woman that she was, she had been kinder to him than Charlotte from the outset.

There can be no doubt but that Emily was the most attractive of the three sisters. In later years, former servants at the Parsonage would declare that she was the prettiest of the children, with beautiful eyes and sensuous lips. She was also the tallest, and had ‘a lithesome graceful figure'. Nevertheless she was a very reserved young lady.

It has been suggested by more than one writer that she had lesbian tendencies. I cannot subscribe to that view. All the signs are that she was a passionate woman, but that her shyness with strangers was so pronounced that any male overtures had been doomed from the start. That had not prevented her from keeping a watching brief over her sisters' affaires however – which was a habit that had earned her the nickname of ‘The Major' from Anne's admirer, Mr Weightman.

It is probable that the unfortunate attachments of her sisters had increased her natural reserve towards men but, in addition, her father was always very sarcastic about would-be suitors and Emily would have wished to avoid being the butt of such comments. Instead, she had sublimated her natural instincts with her poetry, but Nature has a way of triumphing when the conditions are right and this, with Emily feeling very much the Cinderella of the family, was just such a time.

While Charlotte was mooning over M. Héger, and cudgelling her brains for schemes to make money, it was Emily who, as usual, was overseeing the running of the house. She must have been very lonely, especially when Anne was still away, but that was nothing new because, generally speaking, she had been a very private and rather introverted person for the whole of her adult life. Now her main relaxation was to walk over the moors, and it does not take a great effort to imagine her solitary figure wandering across that vast expanse of wild countryside.

Then Nicholls arrived, and one lonely spirit recognised another.

At first Emily felt little but pity for him, and sympathized with his situation, but he constantly sought her out and soon his gentle words began to have their effect. Dormant yearnings were awakened and, despite herself, she began to respond in ways that she would not have thought possible. Came the day when she, the most matter-of-fact and down-to-earth of the Brontë sisters, realized that she was deeply in love.

One has only to read the diary note, written on her twenty-seventh birthday, to feel her general pleasure with life: ‘. . . merely desiring that everybody could be as comfortable as myself as undesponding.' To those not knowing of her secret love, her happiness and optimism seem remarkable in view of her apparent situation, and that of her family.

I have written ‘secret' love, because secret it had to be. As well as keeping it from her father, Emily did not wish her sisters to know what she was up to either, especially the domineering Charlotte. She could not have borne her, of all people, to be privy to the secret. From past experience, she knew that Charlotte would immediately start offering advice, and would probably use the opportunity to go on, even more, about M. Héger. Then there was the fact that her sisters would have derived great amusement from knowing that ‘The Major', of all people, was in love, and that would have been unacceptable to such a proud woman.

Nicholls also had good reason for requiring the matter to be kept quiet. Whatever he felt for Emily at that time – and Martha believed that he was genuinely fond of her – he had no intention of tying himself to such a girl, and such a family.

So they met, as they thought, in secret and, whilst sometimes it was possible to steal a few moments of privacy in the Parsonage, it was usually upon the moors that they came together because of their mutual love of walking over that majestic landscape. On occasion, the villagers remarked that Emily appeared ‘transfigured' when returning from her absences there. She had loved those open spaces all her life, but now they held an additional delight.

Of course it was too much to hope that their meetings would pass unnoticed. There were always villagers about on the moors, but the inquisitive eyes of one seventeen-year-old girl saw more than most.

Martha was equally shrewd in her observation of Charlotte's devious discovery of Emily's poems. Charlotte was not averse to being ‘economical with the truth'. In her ‘Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell', which appears at the front of the 1850 edition of
Wuthering Heights
and
Agnes Grey
, she wrote: ‘One day, in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume of verses in my sister Emily's handwriting . . .' Now that has to be a blatant lie. Emily poured out her soul in her poetry, and that introverted young woman would never, ever, have left such works lying about for anyone to read, especially inquisitive Charlotte.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that she would have put her poems away in her desk as usual. Charlotte had been consumed with curiosity to know what she was writing, but was forced to bide her time in order to find out. Then, when her sister had gone for one of her long walks, her patience was rewarded. We gain some idea of the time which she needed to pry into everything when we learn that there were about forty poems to read!

I find it very telling that Charlotte did not put out her tale about ‘accidentally' lighting on the poems until Emily was long dead.

‘Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book!'

Job 19:23

A
s I have said already, Master Branwell was in a poor state on his return to the Parsonage, but he took to writing in his sober moments because, as he said to Father, he knew he had to do
something
. He had no job, and little chance of getting one, and money was very short.

He also told Father that, whilst with the Robinsons, he had learned from some of his writer friends that writing a ‘novel' – whatever
that
might be – was a way of making money and so, in his spare time, he had made a start on one. It had been put aside of late, but now he had taken it up again.

Taken it up he may have done, but it was only for short spells because for most of his time he was in no fit state to do anything worthwhile. In his drunken mind, though, he had finished his book already and was well on the way to becoming a rich and famous writer, and I myself heard him rambling on in that vein.

Of course, with her ears and eyes
everywhere
, it was not long before Miss Charlotte heard of what he was going around saying, and Mr Nicholls told me in later years that, not knowing the full truth of what her brother was going on about, she was tormented by the thought that there might be something in it. She and her sisters were writing nothing, and the book of poems was still being sent back by publishers, and just the thought that what I have heard her call her ‘disgusting brother' might outshine them all gave her sleepless nights.

Of course, I knew little of that at the time, and therefore I thought it just one of Miss Charlotte's many ideas for making money – which usually came to naught – when I heard her ask her sisters whether or not they thought that they might write their own books. I only realized how much it meant to her when I saw her face set when she heard their answers. Miss Anne told her that she had already been writing whilst with the Robinsons, and had, in fact, almost finished a tale. Then, as if not to be outdone, Miss Emily chimed in to say that she already had an idea for a book.

Miss Charlotte went pale and then very red, and called them ‘a pair of slyboots'. She had clearly been very taken aback. She had thought that she was coming up with a new idea only to find that her younger sisters were well ahead of her. I learnt later that the discovery did nothing to endear them to her; it simply added to her feelings that they were in league against her. She wondered why they had said nothing before she raised the matter, and felt that they might all leave her behind in the race for fame and fortune. Now she felt that she just had to carry on with her plan that they should each write a book, if only to keep an eye on what the others were up to.

Thus it was that, around November, 1845, they all set to writing in earnest.

That was easy for Miss Anne, who was already well on with her book, and soon it became less difficult for Miss Charlotte. I had seen some of the little books which the sisters had written as children with Master Branwell, long before I went to work at the Parsonage, so all of them knew something of the proper way of writing.

The only one of the sisters who seemed to have real trouble was Miss Emily. To my mind, she had not even thought about writing a book, let alone have an idea for one, when Miss Charlotte first came up with the idea, but said that she had simply to tease her sister. Either that, or her idea for a book just had not been good enough. Be that as it may, there were several times, when we were alone together, that she told me that her mind was a total blank, and that she had no idea of what to write about.

Then, all of a sudden, she was off and there seemed to be no stopping her, with her scribbling away faster, and for much longer, than her sisters. I have even seen her taking her papers with her when she went off up to the moors. I could not imagine that she was doing much writing up there, especially with Mr Nicholls about, and I put it down to the fact that, after the business with the poems, she did not want Miss Charlotte ‘accidentally' discovering what she had written. Mr Nicholls has told me that I am right about that, but also that he would look at what she had written and make some changes.