The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (29 page)

“I suspected
something
all along,” said he with a laugh when confronted with the news, “but my suspicions could take no exact form. All I could be certain of, was that you girls were perpetually writing—and not writing letters.”

Despite our objections, papa insisted on keeping the six volumes that comprised the works of the “Bells” displayed on a little table in his study. Papa proudly compiled a packet of extracts from every newspaper and periodical that reviewed our novels, carefully marked with the dates of publication. On more than one occasion, I found papa re-reading these reviews when I knocked on the door of his study and peeked in to announce the arrival of Mr. Nicholls. Quickly, papa was obliged to return his treasured clippings to their envelope, and stash them in their hiding place.

Over the past year, although I had had almost daily contact of some kind with Mr. Nicholls, it had always been brief, and we had rarely exchanged more than a few words. However, unlike our dissolute brother, and the simple, dutiful servants in our household, Mr. Nicholls was an intelligent, questioning, and observant man; this made it a challenge to keep our secret from him. On numerous occasions, Mr. Nicholls arrived at the
parsonage at the same time as the post, when correspondence and parcels from our publishers in London were delivered. These mysterious bundles aroused curiosity in Mr. Nicholls’s eyes, but my sisters and I always disappeared with our booty without a word of explanation.

One such morning in late January, when I heard Tabby call out, “Another parcel for ye, Miss Charlotte!” I came running to the front door, to find Mr. Nicholls returning the dogs from his walk. To my embarrassment, Tabby handed the package to me in Mr. Nicholls’s presence. “Quite th’ popular lady ye are, Miss! Who is it, keeps sending ye all them books from London?”

“A friend,” I replied quickly, colouring as I tried to hide the return direction from Mr. Nicholls.

A week later, when I brought papa and Mr. Nicholls their tea, Mr. Nicholls asked my father why he gave such prominent placement in his study to the books by the Bells. Without missing a beat, papa answered that he merely admired their work. I was grateful to papa for his discretion, as was Emily, who continued to insist,
sine qua non,
on anonymity. I could see, by Mr. Nicholls’s reaction, that he did not question the reply; nor did he express any interest in reading the works in question. I felt certain, at the time, that the notion of a woman penning a novel would have been astonishing to Mr. Nicholls—and the notion that the Bells were in fact
three women,
and the daughters of his parson, would have been the furthest thing from his mind.

I had long been an ardent admirer of William Makepeace Thackeray’s work, and his newest effort,
Vanity Fair,
was a particular favourite of mine. When, not long after the publication of
Jane Eyre,
that worthy gentleman wrote in praise of my novel, I was so astonished, and so grateful for his generous tributes, that I dedicated the second edition of
Jane Eyre
to him—an act which caused an unexpected furour.

“Oh no!” I cried, racing into the dining-room, where Emily and Anne were both vigorously brushing Flossy’s long, silky coat. “I have just heard from Mr. Thackeray, apprising me of
the most surprising and distressing circumstances. Apparently it is public knowledge—although it was entirely unknown to me—that Mr. Thackeray, like my Mr. Rochester, had a mad wife whom he had been obliged to put away.”

“You are joking,” said Emily, putting down the dog’s brush.

“I wish I were. A report is circulating in the press that
Jane Eyre
was written by a governess in Mr. Thackeray’s family, and
that
is why Currer Bell dedicated ‘his’ book to him.”

“Oh dear,” murmured Anne. “What an unfortunate coincidence.”

“Well may it be said that fact is often stranger than fiction,” said I, as I sank onto the sofa with a sigh. “Mr. Thackeray’s letter is so noble, and so uncomplaining; but to think that my inadvertent blunder has made him a subject for common gossip—oh! It is too awful.”

The incident provoked a slew of comments in the press, calling further attention to the three mysterious Bells. Curiosity was aroused, not only by their undetermined sex, and by the content of their novels—(the “eccentricities of woman’s fantasy” complained one critic)—people were now beginning to wonder if the Bells were not in fact one and the same person! Were
Agnes Grey
and
Wuthering Heights,
they asked, in fact early and less successful efforts by the author of
Jane Eyre
?

At first, Emily, Anne, and I just laughed at such speculations. As time wore on, however, and the prattle of the press continued, I found it less and less amusing. Emily tried to hide her pangs of disappointment at the savage reviews of her work behind a mask of resolute indifference and endurance; yet I knew what she truly felt, and I minimised my own achievement in every way I could. At the same time, whenever I heard my book praised, I felt chastened by a mixture of doubt and fear. I had poured all the best of me into
Jane Eyre.
Could I write another book that would be as well received?

The winter of 1848 was particularly severe, with a cruel east wind that whistled in from the moors. My brother and sisters
and I all suffered from the influenza or a very bad cold twice over within the space of a few short weeks. Anne was the only one with whom it stayed long or did much mischief; in her case it was attended with distressing cough and fever, which left her chest weak, and brought on a severe recurrence of the asthma that had troubled her since childhood. For two days and nights, her difficulty of breathing was so painful and pronounced that I feared for her life. Anne bore it as she did all affliction: with heroic endurance and without one complaint, only sighing now and then when nearly worn-out.

Winter passed into spring, and all the while, I struggled to settle on a subject for my next novel. My publishers suggested that I adopt the installment technique employed by both Dickens and Thackeray, but I refused, insisting that I could not think of submitting a work for publication until I had written the last word of the last chapter, and was entirely satisfied with the whole that had preceded it; as such, I would stick steadfastly to the three-volume form. I submitted a plan for a manner in which I might rework
The Professor,
jettisoning the entire first part and revising and expanding the latter, but this was met with a polite and firm refusal. I made three different commencements on a new book, but they all displeased me. For a time, I was greatly stymied.

In my youth, I had been possessed by the
need
to record my vivid imaginings. Then, as with
Jane Eyre,
scribbling had been my joy and my tonic; entire weeks had passed in the blink of an eye while I was writing; I wrote because I could not help it. Now—to my dismay—the very success I had dreamt of, and the business-oriented expectation that came with it, had taken away some of the joy from the enterprise. The eminent writers of the day possessed a knowledge of the world, I felt, such as I could lay no claim to; in my view, this gave their writings an importance and a variety far beyond what I could offer. I felt a great responsibility to produce another excellent work. I did trust that I had the
power
to write; but I found it was not every day, nor even every week, that I could write what was worth reading.

At length, I settled on a topic. Notwithstanding the success of
Jane Eyre,
I was anxious to avoid a repetition of the charges of melodrame and improbability that had been levelled at me by some reviewers. The place in society of the unmarried woman was constantly and increasingly in my mind. At the same time, I was intrigued by the notion of writing a historical novel, and papa had told me many fascinating stories about the volatile conditions during the Luddite riots in the woollen and cotton industries in Yorkshire during the Regency era. With this in mind, I began to research and write
Shirley.

Emily also began a new book of her own, although she refused to share what she was working on. “I do not know if I wish to publish again,” explained Emily, when we met around the dining-table for one of our evening discussions that spring. “Even if I do, I work best in solitude. I wrote the greater part of the first draft of
Wuthering Heights
that way. I have a new book in progress; that is all I am willing to say at present. I shall show it to you if and when I am satisfied with it.”

Anne, in spite of her weakening health, had been sitting stooped over her desk night and day for more than a year, hard at work on her second book,
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
So committed was Anne to the project, that it was only with difficulty that Emily and I could prevail upon her to take a walk, or induce her to converse.

“It is not good for you to lead such a sedentary life,” I warned her, on a particularly glorious day in May. “You need the exercise, Anne. Come out with us!”

“I am almost done copying out my novel,” insisted Anne. “Mr. Newby is expecting it. I want to finish.”

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
was a daring novel, depicting a courageous woman who leaves her drunkard, dissolute husband in order to earn her own living, and to rescue her son from his bad influence. I applauded Anne’s effort and her craft, and felt it was a powerful and well-written book; however, I thought the choice of subject a mistake.

“Your rich drunkard is not Branwell,” I told her, “even if his
drunkenness is clearly Branwell’s. This painstaking rendering of his decay is disturbing to read, and the amorality of many of your central characters” (who were involved in adulterous affairs, like those she had witnessed at Thorp Green), “is, I fear, not something the public will take to readily. Think how they criticised me, for creating a character like Mr. Rochester—even though all of
his
affairs were in his past, and he regretted them.”

“Yes, but Charlotte, if you had to do it over again, would you have written it any differently?”

I hesitated. “No, I suppose not.”

“Your own publishers said that parts of
Jane Eyre
were too painful to read, and would alienate the public—and they were proved wrong. I believe it will be the same with my book. I feel it is my duty to tell this story. If, in my writing, I can do some good—if I can save one young woman from making the kind of foolish mistake that Helen makes in my story—I shall feel that I have achieved my goal.”

Anne loyally gave her completed manuscript to her unscrupulous editor, Mr. Newby, from whom she secured better terms than she had for her first book: she was to receive £25 on publication and a further £25 on the sale of 250 copies, with payments increasing with the rate of sales. However, when Mr. Newby brought out
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
in June 1848, he advertised it with a certain tricky turn in its wording, implying that it was by the same author (in the singular) of
Jane Eyre
and
Wuthering Heights.
Worse yet, he offered it on these terms to Harper’s, the American firm that had published
Jane Eyre
in January (where it had a great run), and with whom my publisher had already made an agreement for Currer Bell’s next novel.

“This is intolerable!” I cried, when I received a letter from Smith & Elder, apprising me of these underhanded dealings. “Mr. Smith is all alarm, suspicion, and wrath! He asks: was I aware that all this was going on? Did I submit my next novel to Harper’s, without his knowledge? Of course I did not! How could he even dream I would do such a thing? How could Mr. Newby perpetrate such a
lie
?”

“I have written to Mr. Newby repeatedly on this subject,” said Anne, greatly vexed, as she sank down on the rocking chair in the dining-room, where I had imparted the news. “I insisted that the works of the Bells are the production of three different authors.”

“Yet Mr. Newby has written to Harper’s,” I exclaimed incredulously, “affirming that to the best of his belief,
Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey,
and
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
were all written by the same person!”

“He wants the public and the trade to believe he has got hold of Currer Bell,” said Emily in disgust. “He is trying to cheat Smith & Elder by securing the American publisher’s bid. You were right, Charlotte. He is a despicable man! I am sorry that I ever gave my book to him.”

“Now Smith & Elder are questioning my loyalty and honesty, as well as my very identity,” said I, pacing back and forth before the hearth. “We must do something at once, to prove to my publisher that we are three separate persons, and we must confront Mr. Newby with his falsehood.”

“How?” said Anne.

“There is only one way. They must see us in the flesh. We must go to London in person—all three of us—without delay.”

“To London!” cried Anne, with a thrilled and terrified expression.

“If we go in person,” argued Emily, “all our efforts at anonymity are lost. They will learn that we are women.”

“What shame is there in revealing the truth?” I replied heatedly. “Our books have already been published and long since reviewed. Let the public know that we are of the nobler sex!”

“No!” cried Emily. “I cannot allow that. I never would have agreed to publish in the first place, had I thought there was any chance of giving up my privacy.”

“Then we will only tell our publishers,” said I, “and make sure they do not reveal our secret to any one else. Will that do?”

Emily heaved a sigh. “If you
must
go to London in person, then
go
—but I want no part of it. This is all about your book,
Anne, and your name, Charlotte. Two authors will prove your point quite as well as three; but Ellis Bell shall remain a man, and
he
shall stay home.”