The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (34 page)

I glanced at the paper Anne held, and saw the item to which she referred. The poem, “The Narrow Way”—an earnest and lovely expression of Anne’s devotion and beliefs—had first been printed that August in
Fraser’s Magazine
under her pseudonym
Acton Bell, and was now reprinted here. Before I could comment, Ellen looked up from her fancy work and said, “I did not know that you wrote poetry, Anne. Is your poem truly published?”

“It is.”

“May I have the honour of reading it?”

Anne turned to me with raised eyebrows and a silent nod, whose meaning I understood. I rose and said, “You may, Nell. But first, I have a gift for you.”

“A gift? Why? Christmas is past, and I thought we agreed not to exchange presents.”

“This is not a Christmas gift. It is a gift in honour of Emily’s memory.” I fetched a set of books from the shelf, and handed them to her. It was the three-volume edition of
Wuthering Heights
and
Agnes Grey
.

Ellen studied the volumes in surprise. “Thank you. I have heard of this book. Was it one of Emily’s favourites?”

Anne and I exchanged a little smile—the first smile that had curved
my
lips, I think, in many months. “I believe it was,” said Anne.

“Emily would have been the last to openly admit it,” I added, “but she loved this book dearly, for the first two volumes are the work of her very own pen. In fact, she named the character of Nelly Dean after you, Nell.”

“After me?” Ellen stared first at the book, and then at me. “Do you mean to say that
Emily
wrote
Wuthering Heights
?”

“She did,” I replied.

“
Emily
was
Ellis Bell
?”

“She was.”

Ellen’s eyes widened in sudden, stunned comprehension. She quickly glanced at the third volume, then looked from me to Anne and back again. “Then who is Acton Bell?”

“I am,” admitted Anne.

“Oh!” exclaimed Ellen, her astonishment and deep esteem all contained in that single word. “Oh, Anne!” Now Ellen slowly turned and stared open-mouthed at me. “Then surely
you,
Charlotte—you must be—”

“Yes!” said I, blushing, as I struggled to withhold another smile. “I am.”

Ellen leapt from her chair in excitement. “I knew it! I knew it! I have never forgotten, Charlotte, how you excelled at telling stories when we were at school. I saw you working on that manuscript at my own house! How many times did I ask you, ‘have you published a book?’ You always rapped my knuckles and said no! When I visited my brother John in London last summer, the whole household was in an uproar to get a copy of
Jane Eyre,
and from the moment the book arrived and the first half page was read aloud, I felt instinctively that it was yours. It was as though
you
were present in every word, your voice and spirit thrilling through and through, with every outlet of feeling. Oh! How I longed to know the truth—I wrote and begged you to tell me the truth—yet still you denied it!”

“I am sorry, Ellen dearest. I did not wish to lie, but Emily forbade me from telling any one. Because we chose pseudonyms with the same surname, I could not admit my identity without revealing hers. Now that she is gone, although Anne and I still wish to preserve our anonymity, we could see no reason to keep the secret from
you
any longer.”

“What can I say, except: I am
so
proud of you.” Ellen wrapped first me and then Anne in her warm embrace. Shaking her head in wonder, she said: “You are both so clever. I cannot even
imagine
writing a novel. Now you must tell me every single detail of how it all came about.”

In the waning months of 1848, our entire attention had been focused on Emily’s illness and decline; at the same time, however, I could not ignore my growing fears on Anne’s behalf. Every day and every night, Anne’s deep, hollow cough echoed through the parsonage. As the new year dawned, papa, determined to obtain the best possible advice, summoned to the house a respected physician from Leeds who specialised in cases of consumption, to examine Anne with the stethoscope.

“It is, I am afraid, a case of tubercular consumption with
congestion of the lungs,” Mr. Teale matter-of-factly told papa and me in the privacy of papa’s study, after he had completed his exam.

I was too choked with dread to speak. Papa asked softly: “Is there nothing that can be done?”

“I believe there is,” said Mr. Teale. “The malady has not yet reached too advanced a stage. A truce and even an arrest of the disease might yet be procured, if your daughter takes my prescriptions and adopts a strict regimen of rest and avoidance of cold.”

Hope surged through me; I could breathe again. Could Anne be saved? Oh! If only it were true! “Tell us exactly what to do, doctor. We will put ourselves in your hands.”

At Mr. Teale’s recommendation, I gave up sharing a bed with Anne, and moved instead into Branwell’s old chamber. We took every care to ensure that the temperature of Anne’s room remained constantly equal. Anne—knowing what helpless agonies we had all suffered in watching Emily forgo all medical advice and treatment—was very patient in her illness, and dutifully followed the doctor’s regimen for as long as she was able. At his direction, she did not stir from the house all winter, even though it meant giving up her beloved Sunday services at church. Papa and I prayed with her at home every Sunday afternoon instead, and he repeated the gist of his sermon for her benefit. However, the blister
⁵⁷
that Mr. Teale insisted we apply to Anne’s side induced only pain but no relief, and the daily dose of cod-liver oil, which Anne said tasted and smelled like train oil, only made her too sick to eat; at length, we were obliged to give these treatments up. Our local medical man strongly advised hydropathy;
⁵⁸
this was attempted with no better result.

A second opinion was sought and received, with Mr. George Smith’s assistance, from the renowned physician to the Queen’s
household, and the foremost authority in England on consumption: Dr. John Forbes. To my disappointment, although Dr. Forbes replied by post with speed and kindness, it was only to express his faith in Mr. Teale, to reiterate advice that we had already received, and to caution me against entertaining any sanguine hopes of Anne’s recovery.

The days of winter passed by as darkly and heavily as a funeral train, each new week reminding us that the same messenger who had snatched Emily from us with such haste was at his evil work again. By the end of March, there was a wasted, hollow look in Anne’s pallid face and eyes—a look too dreadful to witness or describe.

“I do wish it would please God to spare me,” said Anne one morning, as she stared wistfully out the window at a flock of birds soaring above the church steeple, “not only for your sake, Charlotte, and for papa’s, but because I long to do some good in the world before I leave it. I have many schemes in my head for future practice—ideas for stories and books I should like to write. Humble and limited though they may be, I should not like them all to come to nothing, and myself to have lived to so little purpose.”

“You have lived to great purpose, Anne,” said I, fighting tears as I squeezed her hand with deep affection, “and you
shall
get well. You are too precious to give up without a fight.”

In the six months since the day of my walk on the heath with Mr. Nicholls, our household had been so overtaken by death and relentless illness, that he and I had barely exchanged more than a few hurried sentences here and there. The last Sunday in March, however, Mr. Nicholls strode purposefully up to me after services to inquire after Anne.

“Your father has given me regular reports, but I was not sure I believed them. I wanted to hear from
you
how she is faring.”

I opened my mouth to reply, and suddenly, unexpectedly, burst into tears. Mr. Nicholls stood silent and grave before me,
deep sympathy and concern etched on his countenance. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to me. I had a fleeting memory of another man, years ago, in Brussels, who had offered me his handkerchief at a time of grief. How my life had changed since the years I passed in Belgium! I felt almost a completely different person now. Although I had a perfectly good handkerchief of my own in my pocket, I took that which Mr. Nicholls offered, and struggled to regain control of my emotions as I dabbed at my streaming eyes.

“Is she so very ill, then?” asked Mr. Nicholls softly.

I nodded. “When we lost Emily, I thought we had drained the very dregs of our cup of trial, but I greatly fear that there is yet exquisite bitterness to taste. Anne is only twenty-nine years old, sir; yet already, she is weaker and more emaciated than Emily was at the very last.”

“I am sorry. Is there any service that I can perform for Miss Anne, or for you and your father? Anything at all?”

“Thank you, Mr. Nicholls, but we are doing all that is humanly possible; that is our only consolation, I suppose.”

He said good-bye, then; but to my surprise, he called at the house the very next afternoon.

“I have brought you something, Miss Anne,” said Mr. Nicholls, after Martha showed him into the dining-room where Anne was resting, and I was setting the table for dinner.

“Have you, Mr. Nicholls?” replied Anne, as she slowly began to rise from her chair by the fire.

“Please, do not get up.” He hastened forward. “One of my parishioners told me that Gobold’s Vegetable Balsam is an excellent remedy for the type of ills from which you suffer. I thought it might be worth a try. I have taken the liberty of fetching you some from Keighley, in case it might be of benefit.” He placed into her hands a small jar.

“How kind of you. I shall indeed try it. Thank you, sir.” Mr. Nicholls bowed, and was about to depart, when Anne added: “Would you care to join us for tea, Mr. Nicholls?”

“Oh, no—I would not think of intruding on your family meal.”

“It is no intrusion, and it would please me greatly.”

Mr. Nicholls appeared uncomfortable. With a sudden pang, I realised that, in all the years that Mr. Nicholls had resided next door, he had only joined us at table a handful of times, usually when a visiting clergyman was in town, or at his own invitation, in the company of one of the other local curates. On every one of those occasions, I had been less than gracious, still prejudiced by my misconceptions about him. I turned to him now with a smile. “Do join us, Mr. Nicholls. We would be very happy to have you.”

He glanced at me in surprise and gratitude, and bowed again. “Thank you. I will.”

The meal of roast lamb and turnips progressed quietly at first. I made an attempt at small-talk with papa and Mr. Nicholls, but Anne’s lack of appetite and frequent, deep cough was a continual reminder to all at table of her weakened state.

“Papa, Charlotte: I have been thinking,” said Anne, as she laid down her fork. “You know my legacy from Miss Outh-waite?”

I nodded, providing a hasty explanation to Mr. Nicholls: “Anne’s godmother died just last month. She left Anne £200.”

“I would like to use part of it to pay for a holiday,” said Anne.

“A holiday?” was papa’s surprised rejoinder.

“I would like us all to go away for a few weeks. I have read that a change of air or removal to a better climate hardly ever fails of success in consumptive cases, if taken in time.”

“My first impulse was to hasten you away to a warmer climate,” I admitted, “but the doctor strictly forbade it. He said you
must not travel
.”

“He said I must not leave the house until winter is over,” corrected Anne, “and it is now spring. I feel that there is no time to lose.”

“You might go to the coast,” suggested Mr. Nicholls. “The sea air is supposed to be particularly beneficial.”

“Yes!” cried Anne, her eyes sparkling with a zest I had not seen in months. “Oh! How I should love to go to the sea! If only I could see Scarborough again. I so enjoyed my summers there with the Robinsons. You would love Scarborough, papa; and Charlotte, I see how weary you have become from nursing me. The sea air would do us both good.”

“I am seventy-two years old, my dear,” said papa. “My travelling days are over. But you two may go, if you wish.”

I gave Anne my promise to take her to Scarborough if the doctor would allow it; but after dinner, when I walked Mr. Nicholls to the door, I expressed to him my grave misgivings: “I would do anything for Anne; but do you truly think she has the strength for such a journey?”

“The journey may help her regain her strength,” said Mr. Nicholls.

I nodded; but as he dipped his head and studied my expression, he guessed the fears that I could not put into words. Gently, he said, “If the Lord wishes to take her, Miss Brontë, he will do so, whether she’s here or in Scarborough. It’s clear she wants this very much. She deserves this one last pleasure, don’t you think?”

I nodded tearfully.

“Don’t worry about leaving your father,” added he, astutely naming my second fear, as he crossed the threshold. “I will watch over him while you are gone.”

A
nne knew of a particular lodging house at No. 2 Cliff, where she had stayed before with the Robinsons, and which she said was one of the best situations in Scarborough. I booked a room there accordingly, insisting on a sea-view, for I wanted Anne to have every possible advantage. Anne, determined that I should have a companion in the dreadful event that something should happen to her, invited Ellen to accompany us, and Ellen readily agreed.

The three of us travelled by train to the Yorkshire coast, breaking our journey with an overnight stay in York, where Anne was able to go out in a Bath chair.
⁵⁹
Upon seeing the imposing York Minster, which Anne had so admired in the past, she was moved to tears.

“If
finite
powers can build such a cathedral as this,” said she with great emotion, “what might we expect from the infinite?” Ellen and I, seeing Anne’s enraptured face, were so choked up as to be incapable of speech.

Anne’s happiness increased upon our arrival in Scarborough,
where she was eager to share its delights with us. She took us along the bridge across the ravine in the middle of the bay, from which vantage point we were afforded a spectacular view of cliffs and sands; she then insisted that Ellen and I walk on ourselves, while she rested. She even drove out on the beach for an hour in a donkey cart, taking the reins herself when she felt the boy driver was not treating the animal well.

On Sunday evening, the 27th of May, we wheeled Anne’s chair to the window of our sitting-room, whence we three viewed the most glorious sunset I have ever witnessed. The sky was awash in shades of pink, purple, blue, and gold; the castle on the cliff stood in proud glory, gilded by the declining luminary; the distant ships glittered like burnished gold; and the little boats anchored near the shore heaved pleasantly with the ebb and flow of the tide.

“Oh!” was the single word Anne spoke, her sweet, angelic face illumed nearly as brilliantly as the scene we gazed upon.

The next morning, feeling much weaker, Anne asked if she might see a doctor to learn if there was yet time to return home. A medical man was summoned—a stranger—and he told her with poignant honesty that death was close at hand. I was stunned; I did not think it would be so soon. Anne thanked him, and bade him to leave her to our care. She lay on the sofa, praying softly to herself, while Ellen and I sat silently at her side, unable to stem our flow of tears.

“Do not weep for me,” said Anne quietly. “I am not afraid to die.” In between laboured breaths, she said: “Do you remember, Charlotte, before we came here, when I told you how much you would love Scarborough, and described its many splendours? I painted for you a mental picture of these very lodgings, and told you of the beautiful view. You had to take my words on faith, then, for you had not yet seen it yourself. But has it turned out to be just as I said?”

“It has,” said I brokenly.

“So it shall be with the kingdom of heaven. We must take it
on faith, be thankful for release from a suffering life, and trust in God that a better existence lies before us.”

Had I never believed in a future life before—seeing my sister’s radiant and tranquil face, and hearing those serene and measured words from her lips—I would have felt assured of it now.

To Ellen, she said, “Be a sister in my stead. Give Charlotte as much of your company as you can.”

“I will,” replied Ellen tearfully.

I took Anne’s hands in mine, shaking with the effort to restrain my grief. “I love you, Anne.”

“I love you, too. Take courage, Charlotte. Take courage,” were Anne’s last whispered words.

A year before, had a prophet warned me of the suffering that lay in the long months ahead—had he foretold how I should stand in June 1849—how stripped and bereaved I should be—I should have thought: this can never be endured. They were all gone: Branwell, Emily, Anne—all gone like dreams within an eight-month period—gone as Maria and Elizabeth had gone more than twenty years before. Why younger and better souls than I had been snatched from life, while God chose to spare me, I could not comprehend; but I believed that the Lord was wise, perfect, and merciful. I vowed to somehow remain strong, and to be worthy of his gifts.

To spare papa the grief of a funeral for yet another child, we buried Anne in Scarborough, in the churchyard of St. Mary’s, high above the town. Although I was sad that she would not lie in our own church vault with the rest of the family, it gave me comfort to think that Anne was laid to rest in her favourite place, overlooking the dramatic sea-side view that she so loved.

When I returned to Haworth, papa and the servants received me with such warm affection that I should have felt consoled, but there is little consolation for such a grief. The dogs greeted me in a strange ecstasy. I am certain they regarded me as the
harbinger of others; they thought that as I had come back, those who had been so long absent were sure to be not far behind. Mr. Nicholls assumed many additional duties in the parish to assist my grieving and aging father, and he expressed his sympathy to me; but I was too deep in my own misery to do more than acknowledge his attempts at solace.

Oh! How quiet the parsonage was. The rooms, once so full of drama and life, were all empty and silent; all day long, the only sound was the ticking of the clock. When I dared to venture out, the resounding chip, chip of the stone-cutter’s recording chisel, as he engraved the endless headstones for Haworth parish, was such a painful reminder of my own fresh grief that it sent me scurrying back inside. I felt like a prisoner in solitary confinement, with only a church and a gloomy graveyard for my prospect. I began to thirst for other society, but at the same time, I doubted my capability of pleasing or deriving pleasure from it. For a full week, I was incapable of performing any useful occupation, and could not lift a pen for any more formidable task than the writing of a few lines to an indulgent friend.

At length, after an inner struggle, I rallied. The struggle came on a dim June morning; my first thought upon awakening had been a dour repetition of the same grim words that had plagued me all week: “Your youth is past. You shall never marry. The two human beings who understood you, and whom you understood, are gone. Solitude, Remembrance, and Longing are to be almost your sole companions all day through. At night you shall go to bed with them; they will long keep you sleepless; to-morrow, you shall wake to them again, and every day thereafter, for the rest of your life.”

I wallowed for a few tearful moments in this state of self-pity, when a new voice spoke up with sudden force—a sweeter, purer voice—the voice of an angel, who sounded (I thought) like Anne: “Lonely sufferer, these are dark days indeed; but there are thousands who suffer more than you. Yes, you are lonely, but you are not alone; yes, you have lost most of those you loved, but you still have one near relative left, who is very dear to
you. Yes, you reside in an isolated moorland parish, but you are no desperate old maid, without hope or motive; nor are you like the raven, weary of surveying the deluge and without an ark to return to. No! You
have
hope! You have motive!
Labour
must be the cure, not sympathy! Labour is the only radical cure for rooted sorrow!”

I sat up in bed, my heart pounding as I threw off the covers and dried my eyes. My new-found course was clear. To ease my grief and loneliness, I must go back to work.

My novel
Shirley
had been almost two-thirds completed when my brother died and my sisters became ill. I had barely looked at it since. It was hard going now, trying to write in unaccustomed isolation; it seemed useless to attempt to create what there no longer lived an Ellis and Acton Bell to read. I dearly missed their congenial, bantering support; and at first the whole book, with every hope founded on it, seemed to fade to vanity and vexation of spirit.

At length, however, the occupation of writing became a boon to me; it took me out of dark and desolate reality to an unreal but happier region. I could pour out my own feelings onto the page, with words wrung straight from the pain at the aching centre of my heart; but I could be kinder to my own characters than God had been to me. I could strike my fictional Caroline with a fever, take her into the Valley of the Shadow to the very brink of death, and then—like the powerful Genius Tallii
⁶⁰
of my childhood—I could restore her to health, find her a longed-for, long-lost relative, and give her in marriage to the man she loved.

You can write nothing of value unless you give yourself wholly to the theme, and when you so give yourself, you lose ap
petite and sleep—it cannot be helped; and so it was with
Shirley
. I put great effort into the novel, completing it at the end of August 1849; again, the book was rushed into print, appearing in late October. It was for the most part well received by the press and public, though not with such acclaim as
Jane Eyre.
It seemed that those who had spoken disparagingly of
Jane Eyre
liked
Shirley
a little better than its predecessor; while those who were most charmed with
Jane Eyre,
were—ironically—(despite certain critics’ stern admonitions to avoid melodrame in future) disappointed at not again finding the same level of excitement and stimulus. What I did not foresee was the way in which my new book would change my life:

Shirley
took away, once and forever, my precious cover of anonymity.

In writing
Jane Eyre,
although I based the Lowood School and its populace on true events, those events had occurred so long ago, that a connection was not made to the author’s life. My new book changed all that.

Shirley
was set in the past, against a backdrop of social and economic unrest, during the Luddite riots in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1811–12. However, I had modelled many of the characters on people who were nearly all still living in the close-knit communities of Birstall, Gomersal, and our own neighbouring parishes. Perhaps it was naive of me, but I entertained no fear of discovery. I was so little known, I thought it inconceivable that I should be identified with the work; that any one should suspect the quiet, unmarried daughter of Haworth’s parson of writing a novel, was the furthest thing from my mind. How wrong I turned out to be!

The unveiling of my secret began quietly. My correspondence from Smith & Elder occasionally arrived unsealed; it had been opened and examined, I suspected, at the Keighley post-office. Joe Taylor, to whom I had applied for advice in the writing of
Shirley,
had told so many people in Gomersal about my authorship, that when I visited Ellen there, I was met with a new
deference and augmented kindness from people from all over the district.

The critic Mr. George Lewes, upon hearing from a former schoolfellow of mine who recognised the school in
Jane Eyre
as the Clergy Daughters’ School, and Currer Bell as Charlotte Brontë, announced that the author of
Shirley
was a spinster and the daughter of a clergyman, who lived in Yorkshire! The news spread to the London newspapers. Mr. Smith assured me that it was best to fight fire with fire, and so in December 1849 I went to London to stay with him and his mother, where I was formally introduced at a dinner party to the literary Rhadamanthi:
⁶¹
the five most respected and dreaded critics in the world of letters. Although I trembled at first to meet these great men, I discovered them to be prodigiously civil when met face to face; and in perceiving their flaws, and finding them to be mortal after all, I lost my awe of them.

Mr. Nicholls was one of the first people in Haworth to learn of my authorship. It was a bright, brisk January day, just after the commencement of the new decade. A winter cold had kept me inside ever since my return from London. Now recovered, and bundled up in cloak, hat, and muff, I was taking advantage of a respite in the weather to walk a well-trodden path in the snowy churchyard, with no one else about. After some minutes, I heard the crunching of footsteps on the snow behind me. Mr. Nicholls approached and stopped before me, his hands jammed in his coat pockets, his cheeks bright red from the cold, and a peculiar, half-smiling, half-flustered look on his face.

“Miss Brontë.”

“Mr. Nicholls.”

He glanced at me, then away, then back at me again, in a look that was part awe, part shyness, part stunned disbelief. “I was hoping to see you. I wanted to congratulate you. I’ve learned
from your father the most astonishing news—that you’ve had two books published.”

“Papa told you? I shall have to scold him, Mr. Nicholls; that was very wrong of him. It was meant to be a secret.”

“Why keep such an accomplishment a secret, Miss Brontë? Two books! You should be very proud. The moment he told me, I went out and got hold of a copy of
Jane Eyre.
”

I felt a strange fluttering in the pit of my stomach. “You have read it?”

“I read it in two sittings. I could not put it down.”

I felt a heat rise to my face and I looked away. I was pleased by his response, yet at the same time aghast. It was one thing to lay bare one’s soul under cover of anonymity; it was quite another when that safety shield was removed, exposing oneself, naked and open, to the world.
Jane Eyre
revealed some of my most personal thoughts and feelings with regard to love, morality, and a woman’s place in society; it revealed a side to my nature which (as an unmarried woman, and one whom Mr. Nicholls had admittedly called an old maid) I felt could be construed as the passionate ravings of a lovelorn spinster. Did Mr. Nicholls view me as such? I could not tell.

“I would never have guessed that you would be interested in reading such a novel, sir,” was my quiet reply.

“I was educated with the classics, I admit, and I’ve never read this sort of book before; nor have I ever read a book written by some one I know. It was a new and thrilling experience to read your story, Miss Brontë. It was—it
is
a very good book.”