The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (26 page)

“Well,” said Emily, lying back on the grass with a satisfied smile, “
that
is something.”

“It certainly is,” agreed I triumphantly. “It appears that the expense we incurred in publishing the volume was justified.”

Appearances can be deceiving, however, as we soon discovered. Despite the fact that another positive notice appeared in October, and we spent a further £10 on advertising, our book of rhymes was not wanted. A year after its publication, only two copies had been sold! On that warm July day in 1846, however, my sisters and I could know nothing of the little book’s fate. Even if some soothsayer had sagely warned us that our first foray into publishing would prove, in the end, to be an utter failure, I believe we would have refused to allow it to crush our spirits; for we had moved on to something bigger and bolder: we each had a novel, now completed and fair-copied, and ready to submit for publication.

W
e did not intend, this time, to publish on our own account. In early July, I wrapped up our manuscripts and sent them off to the first name on a list of London publishers that I had compiled, explaining that the authors had already appeared before the public. As the three-volume set was the standard method of marketing a work of fiction, I described the works as “three tales, each occupying a volume and capable of being published together or separately, as thought most advisable.”

While we waited to hear back about our novels, my attention necessarily became focused on my father. For a long while, papa had required assistance with all of the most basic activities of daily living, and his vision was now wholly obscured.

In August 1846, I accompanied papa to Manchester to undergo an eye operation with Mr. Wilson, an eye specialist of some renown, with whom Emily and I had consulted earlier that month. We moved into rented lodgings, where Mr. Wilson performed the operation on August 25th with two surgeons assisting. He decided to operate on only one eye, in case infection should set in. Papa displayed extraordinary patience and firm
ness throughout the ordeal. Afterwards, he was confined to his bed in a dark room with bandages over his eyes and a hired nurse in attendance, with instructions that he be bled with eight leeches at a time, placed on his temples, in order to prevent inflammation. He was not to stir for four days, or leave our lodgings for five weeks—and he was to be spoken to as little as possible.

The long wait now began.

Earlier that same morning, a letter had arrived from Emily, matter-of-factly stating that our three manuscripts had been returned, accompanied by a few curt words of rejection, by Henry Colburn, the first publisher to whom I had sent them. Although disheartened, I gave little thought to Emily’s letter all day, my focus entirely directed to providing that comfort and support which papa required. Now that the surgery was completed, however, and I was left all alone in an airless, narrow, red brick, terraced house in Manchester in the heat of an August evening, I could not help but ponder our future.

I could not—
would not
—accept defeat. From my trunk, I retrieved the portable writing desk that I always took with me when I travelled, and unfolded it on top of a scratched little table by the window. I wrote a brief letter to Emily, instructing her to submit our work again. Restless, I then stood up and began to pace back and forth in the little sitting-room.

How strange it was to be living in an unfamiliar place, in such enforced seclusion! What was I to do with myself, I wondered, in the ensuing five weeks? To my disappointment, I was not even allowed to cheer papa by conversation. My days, I knew, would be long, filled with anxiety and no occupation. To make matters worse, I was suffering from a bad tooth-ache—a physical pain which was as agonising as my pervasive loneliness. I desperately needed some means of distraction.

The solution to my dilemma came to me in the form of an inner voice that was so unexpectedly sharp, and so distinct, that it stopped me in my tracks.

“There is one place,” said the voice in my head, “where you
have always found consolation and refuge in times of need: your imagination.”

“Yes! There is truth in that,” I replied. Mentally, I further soliloquised: “
There
is my answer. It is insufficient to rely on the manuscripts we have completed, as our one and only ticket to success. My sisters must do as they please; but if I truly wish to be published some day,
I must keep on writing.
I must begin another book, the sooner the better—and what better time or place than now?”

What, I wondered, should I write about?

Emily had insisted that my novel
The Professor
was devoid of incident, a surface image with no depth. She had criticised me for employing a male narrator, and called the writing passionless and soulless. Perhaps Emily was right. Perhaps the self-control that I had been so determined to maintain ever since I left Brussels
had
proved injurious to my writing. Perhaps publishers, and the reading public, wanted something a little more wild, more passionate, and more wonderful and thrilling, than the homely tale I had written.

I proceeded up and down the room, deep in thought, endeavouring to come up with a fresh subject for a new book, but nothing that came to mind appealed to me. At length the sun went down, and I realised I was very hungry; in great frustration, I gave up the occupation. I went to the kitchen, lit a candle, and tried to take some nourishment, but the pain in my tooth was so severe, that I could take only a few wincing bites of the bread and cold meat that I had bought upon our arrival. I looked in on my father, who the nurse assured me was asleep; I then returned to my solitary musings.

It was nearly midnight. Famished, lonely, and out of sorts, I stopped and stared out the sitting-room window at the bright moon and the sprinkling of stars. All at once, an eerie sensation came over me, and I caught my breath. It seemed as if I had gazed out this same window once before; as if I had felt the exact same feelings that now possessed me, at some time in the past. I knew that was impossible; I had never entered these lodg
ings before in my life. Whence, then, did this peculiar feeling come from? What was it about my present, unpleasant circumstances which felt so uncannily familiar?

Suddenly, the answer came to me. I had indeed once been shut up in a similarly strange and lonely place, where I had felt equally ravenous and miserable. I had stood before a window just as I stood now, and gazed out at the night sky with desperate longing, wishing that the moon could send me home to Haworth on one of its beams. I remembered it as if it was yesterday:

It was when I was eight years old, and incarcerated at the Clergy Daughters’ School.

Papa could not have known, when he escorted me to the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge in August 1824, of the horrors that awaited me and my sisters there—or the devastating effects its tenure would have on my entire family. Indeed, he felt it providential that he had at last found an establishment where he could educate all his daughters for a reasonable price; for the new school, founded for the daughters of Evangelical clergymen, was sponsored by some of the most prominent people in the country, and the fees were kept low by subscriptions.

My sister Maria was ten years old at the time—only two years older than I—but with her lovely pale face and cloud of long dark hair, her devotion to study and family, and her brilliant mind (she could debate with papa on all the leading topics of the day), Maria had always seemed very old and wise to me, and had served as a model of good behaviour to the rest of us. It was seven-year-old Maria who had held me in her arms when our mother died; it was Maria who had comforted me when I was uncertain about the future. Although our aunt Branwell had selflessly left her native Cornwall to move in and take charge of us, she was a strict and exacting woman. It was my sister Maria who became our mother substitute in our affections, and I adored her.

Elizabeth, one year older than I, was also a sweet sister and
dutiful child, whom I both loved and admired. Unlike Maria, Elizabeth was more outgoing: she loved active play, enjoyed helping in the kitchen, and her greatest dream at the time was one day to own a pretty dress.

All six of us children suffered from the measles and whooping-cough that spring. As Maria and Elizabeth were the first to recover, they were the first to be enrolled in school. A month later, papa brought me to join them. I knew nothing of schools then, good or bad; I only knew that at eight years old, I was at last to see something of the world beyond my own neighbourhood, and the prospect thrilled me!

The Clergy Daughters’ School lay forty-five miles from Haworth in the tiny, isolated hamlet of Cowan Bridge. The large, two-storeyed building of stone and brick, situated beside a bridge and overlooking a stream and an endless vista of low, wooded hills, had been converted into a school from an old bobbin-mill. Its cold, grim interior now housed a vast, high-ceilinged schoolroom on the ground floor, with a large dormitory above, where more than fifty pupils slept two to a bed, in closely packed rows of narrow cots.

The school’s founder and director, the celebrated Reverend Carus Wilson, was a towering block of black marble, with piercing grey eyes under bushy brows. He would appear without warning in the schoolroom, causing students and teachers alike to leap to their feet in silent deference, as he majestically uttered a string of criticisms regarding both teachers’ and pupils’ performance or appearance. To my horror, and my sisters’ misery and distress, he sent for a barber and had their long, beautiful hair chopped off a few weeks after I arrived. The main point of his visits, however, was fiercely to issue whatever religious and moral lesson he deemed most appropriate for the day.

“The intent of this institution,” Mr. Wilson sternly proclaimed one afternoon, “is not to pamper the body, or accustom you to habits of luxury and indulgence; it is devoted entirely to your spiritual edification, for that is the route to the salvation of your immortal soul.”

I had not given much thought to heaven or hell before; but Mr. Wilson’s severe approach, with its terrifying threats of damnation, was to produce in me an effect opposite to his intention: it created a passionate and lifelong resentment towards any religious doctrine which precluded freedom of individual thought or expression.

Our daily routine at the school was strictly regimented. We arose each morning in the dark to the loud ringing of a bell; we dressed by the dim, flickering glow of a rush-light, in identical, high-necked nankeen frocks and brown holland pinafores,
⁵¹
which were both uncomfortable and unbecoming. An hour and a half of tedious morning prayers was followed by an inedible breakfast, and then lessons began. The teaching methods were rudimentary: pupils gathered in groups by age around a teacher who orally presented a concept, which we were expected to learn by heart and parrot back aloud. I found this difficult at first, as I had little experience with memorisation, and the murmured cacophony of repetition from the other classes in the immense, echoing schoolroom was very distracting. I eventually mastered the tasks that were expected of me, however; school-work, I discovered, was something I was good at; it turned out to be the least of my worries.

It was a pity, I often thought, that papa had not stayed long enough when he delivered me or my sisters to school, to comprehend fully the dismal living conditions, the harsh disciplinary practices, and the many offences with regard to food to which we were daily subjected.

Indeed, the food was very bad, and in very short supply; we were kept in a constant state of near starvation. The cook was extremely dirty; she did not always clean out her pots before using them again. The typical daily meal was a watery stew called hot-pot, of boiled potatoes and bits of tainted, rangy meat, which had such an offensive taste and smell that I could not eat it, and was unable to stomach meat for many years thereafter. The
porridge at breakfast was not only often burnt, but filled with fragments of other indefinable, greasy substances. The milk was often bingy,
⁵²
and for tea, we were each allotted only a small mug of coffee and half a slice of brown bread—an offering which was usually stolen by one of the ravenous older girls. The only other food provided was a glass of water and a dreaded piece of oat cake before evening prayers.

As to prayers—although I firmly believe that religion is the life-blood of all existence, and should be the groundwork of all education—the unreasonably long hours dedicated to devotion, sermons, and lecture scripture lessons at the Clergy Daughters’ School, particularly on an empty stomach, served more to hinder rather than promote the salvation of immortal souls.

In my second week at school, I was watching the other girls running about in the convent-like garden during the mid-day play hour, when I spied my sister Maria taking refuge from the sun in a quiet corner beneath the covered veranda. A book was open on Maria’s lap, but she was not looking at it; instead, she stared off into space, to some point beyond the high, spike-guarded enclosing walls. I plunked down on the stone bench beside her and said, “A penny for your thoughts.”

Maria looked up with a startled and embarrassed smile. “I was thinking of home.”

“Oh! How I would love to be home right now. I hoped I would like this place, but now I do not think I shall.”

“It does not matter whether or not we like it, Charlotte. It is only important that we do well and get a proper education, for this is the only school papa can afford. Did you know that he has paid an additional fee for you and me to be educated as governesses?”

“Governesses?” I made a face. “What about Elizabeth? Is she to be a governess?”

“No. Papa said Elizabeth is more suited to be the mistress of the household when she grows up. You and I are lucky, Charlotte. We will learn so much more than the other girls. We must be as good as we can, learn everything that is assigned, be neat, tidy, and punctual at all times—and take care not to offend Miss Pilcher.”

Miss Pilcher, who taught history and grammar to the third class, was a short, thin woman whose weather-beaten face and permanently-frazzled expression made her appear a decade older than her twenty-six years. She slept in a chamber adjacent to the dormitory; it was her responsibility to see to it that we were all properly clad and prompt in our arrival at morning prayers, a duty which she seemed to greatly resent. She also seemed to take a particular dislike to Maria, who, to my dismay, she persecuted on a regular basis for the most minor of offences.

When Maria’s mind wandered in class, Miss Pilcher made her stand on a chair in the centre of the room for an entire day; for an untidy drawer, she pinned several undergarments to Maria’s frock, and bound around her forehead a piece of pasteboard, upon which she had inscribed the word “Slattern.” My heart burned with pain and fury at these injustices; but worse was yet to come. Twice, I saw Maria flogged with “the rod”: a terrifying tool made from a bundle of twigs tied together at one end. The fear of that tool’s sting was a great motivator to dutiful behaviour in every student; yet Miss Pilcher appeared to enjoy employing it for even the most cursory transgression. I watched in impotent horror, flinching as each of the twelve sharp lashes struck Maria’s neck; but Maria remained calm and stoic throughout the ordeal, not giving way to tears until later, after she had quietly returned the despised rod to its place of storage.