Book: The Life of Charlotte Bronte

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A fortnight later she writes:--

"I did not think Papa well enough to be left, and accordingly
begged Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth to return to London
without me. It was arranged that we were to stay at several of
their friends' and relatives' houses on the way; a week or more
would have been taken up on the journey. I cannot say that I
regret having missed this ordeal; I would as lief have walked
among red-hot plough-shares; but I do regret one great treat,
which I shall now miss. Next Wednesday is the anniversary dinner
of the Royal Literary Fund Society, held in Freemasons' Hall.
Octavian Blewitt, the secretary, offered me a ticket for the
ladies' gallery. I should have seen all the great literati and
artists gathered in the hall below, and heard them speak;
Thackeray and Dickens are always present among the rest. This
cannot now be. I don't think all London can afford another sight
to me so interesting."

It became requisite, however, before long, that she should go to
London on business; and as Sir James Kay Shuttleworth was
detained in the country by indisposition, she accepted Mrs.
Smith's invitation to stay quietly at her house, while she
transacted her affairs.

In the interval between the relinquishment of the first plan and
the adoption of the second, she wrote the following letter to one
who was much valued among her literary friends:--

"May 22nd.

"I had thought to bring the Leader and the Athenaeum myself this
time, and not to have to send them by post, but it turns out
otherwise; my journey to London is again postponed, and this time
indefinitely. Sir James Kay Shuttleworth's state of health is the
cause-a cause, I fear, not likely to be soon removed. . . . Once
more, then, I settle myself down in the quietude of Haworth
Parsonage, with books for my household companions, and an
occasional letter for a visitor; a mute society, but neither
quarrelsome, nor vulgarising, nor unimproving.

"One of the pleasures I had promised myself consisted in asking
you several questions about the Leader, which is really, in its
way, an interesting paper. I wanted, amongst other things, to ask
you the real names of some of the contributors, and also what
Lewes writes besides his Apprenticeship of Life. I always think
the article headed 'Literature' is his. Some of the
communications in the 'Open Council' department are odd
productions; but it seems to me very fair and right to admit
them. Is not the system of the paper altogether a novel one? I do
not remember seeing anything precisely like it before.

"I have just received yours of this morning; thank you for the
enclosed note. The longings for liberty and leisure which May
sunshine wakens in you, stir my sympathy. I am afraid Cornhill is
little better than a prison for its inmates on warm spring or
summer days. It is a pity to think of you all toiling at your
desks in such genial weather as this. For my part, I am free to
walk on the moors; but when I go out there alone, everything
reminds me of the times when others were with me, and then the
moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening. My
sister Emily had a. particular love for them, and there is not a
knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry
leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The
distant prospects were Anne's delight, and when I look round, she
is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of
the horizon. In the hill-country silence, their poetry comes by
lines and stanzas into my mind: once I loved it; now I dare not
read it, and am driven often to wish I could taste one draught of
oblivion, and forget much that, while mind remains, I never shall
forget. Many people seem to recall their departed relatives with
a sort of melancholy complacency, but I think these have not
watched them through lingering sickness, nor witnessed their last
moments: it is these reminiscences that stand by your bedside at
night, and rise at your pillow in the morning. At the end of all,
however, exists the Great Hope. Eternal Life is theirs now."

She had to write many letters, about this time, to authors who
sent her their books, and strangers who expressed their
admiration of her own. The following was in reply to one of the
latter class, and was addressed to a young man at Cambridge:--

"May 23rd, 1850.

"Apologies are indeed unnecessary for a 'reality of feeling, for
a genuine unaffected impulse of the spirit,' such as prompted you
to write the letter which I now briefly acknowledge.

"Certainly it is 'something to me' that what I write should be
acceptable to the feeling heart and refined intellect;
undoubtedly it is much to me that my creations (such as they are)
should find harbourage, appreciation, indulgence, at any friendly
hand, or from any generous mind. You are very welcome to take
Jane, Caroline, and Shirley for your sisters, and I trust they
will often speak to their adopted brother when he is solitary,
and soothe him when he is sad. If they cannot make themselves at
home in a thoughtful, sympathetic mind, and diffuse through its
twilight a cheering, domestic glow, it is their fault; they are
not, in that case, so amiable, so benignant, not so real as they
ought to be. If they CAN, and can find household altars in human
hearts, they will fulfil the best design of their creation, in
therein maintaining a genial flame, which shall warm but not
scorch, light but not dazzle.

"What does it matter that part of your pleasure in such beings
has its source in the poetry of your own youth rather than in any
magic of theirs? What, that perhaps, ten years hence, you may
smile to remember your present recollections, and view under
another light both 'Currer Bell' and his writings? To me this
consideration does not detract from the value of what you now
feel. Youth has its romance, and maturity its wisdom, as morning
and spring have their freshness, noon and summer their power,
night and winter their repose. Each attribute is good in its own
season. Your letter gave me pleasure, and I thank you for it.

"CURRER BELL."

Miss Bronte went up to town at the beginning of June, and much
enjoyed her stay there; seeing very few persons, according to the
agreement she made before she went; and limiting her visit to a
fortnight, dreading the feverishness and exhaustion which were
the inevitable consequences of the slightest excitement upon her
susceptible frame.

"June 12th.

"Since I wrote to you last, I have not had many moments to
myself, except such as it was absolutely necessary to give to
rest. On the whole, however, I have thus far got on very well,
suffering much less from exhaustion than I did last time.

"Of course I cannot give you in a letter a regular chronicle of
how my time has been spent. I can only--just notify. what I deem
three of its chief incidents: a sight of the Duke of Wellington
at the Chapel Royal (he is a real grand old man), a visit to the
House of Commons (which I hope to describe to you some day when I
see you), and last, not least, an interview with Mr. Thackeray.
He made a morning call, and sat above two hours. Mr. Smith only
was in the room the whole time. He described it afterwards as a
'queer scene,' and--I suppose it was. The giant sate before me; I
was moved to speak to him of some of his short-comings (literary
of course); one by one the faults came into my head, and one by
one I brought them out, and sought some explanation or defence.
He did defend himself, like a great Turk and heathen; that is to
say, the excuses were often worse than the crime itself. The
matter ended in decent amity; if all be well, I am to dine at his
house this evening.

"I have seen Lewes too. . . . I could not feel otherwise to him
than half-sadly, half-tenderly,--a queer word that last, but I
use it because the aspect of Lewes's face almost moves me to
tears; it is so wonderfully like Emily,--her eyes, her features,
the very nose, the somewhat prominent mouth, the forehead, even,
at moments, the expression: whatever Lewes says, I believe I
cannot hate him. Another likeness I have seen, too, that touched
me sorrowfully. You remember my speaking of a Miss K., a young
authoress, who supported her mother by writing? Hearing that she
had a longing to see me, I called on her yesterday. . . . She met
me half-frankly, half-tremblingly; we sate down together, and
when I had talked with her five minutes, her face was no longer
strange, but mournfully familiar;--it was Martha in every
lineament. I shall try to find a moment to see her again. . . . I
do not intend to stay here, at the furthest, more than a week
longer; but at the end of that time I cannot go home, for the
house at Haworth is just now unroofed; repairs were become
necessary."

She soon followed her letter to the friend to whom it was
written; but her visit was a very short one, for, in accordance
with a plan made before leaving London, she went on to Edinburgh
to join the friends with whom she had been staying in town. She
remained only a few days in Scotland, and those were principally
spent in Edinburgh, with which she was delighted, calling London
a "dreary place" in comparison.

"My stay in Scotland" (she wrote some weeks later) "was short,
and what I saw was chiefly comprised in Edinburgh and the
neighbourhood, in Abbotsford and in Melrose, for I was obliged to
relinquish my first intention of going from Glasgow to Oban, and
thence through a portion of the Highlands; but though the time
was brief, and the view of objects limited, I found such a charm
of situation, association, and circumstance, that I think the
enjoyment experienced in that little space equalled in degree,
and excelled in kind, all which London yielded during a month's
sojourn Edinburgh, compared to London, is like a vivid page of
history compared to a large dull treatise on political economy;
and as to Melrose and Abbotsford, the very names possess music
and magic."

And again, in a letter to a different correspondent, she says:--

"I would not write to you immediately on my arrival at home,
because each return to this old house brings with it a phase of
feeling which it is better to pass through quietly before
beginning to indite letters. The six weeks of change and
enjoyment are past, but they are not lost; memory took a sketch
of each as it went by, and, especially, a distinct daguerreotype
of the two days I spent in Scotland. Those were two very pleasant
days. I always liked Scotland as an idea, but now, as a reality,
I like it far better; it furnished me with some hours as happy
almost as any I ever spent. Do not fear, however, that I am going
to bore you with description; you will, before now, have received
a pithy and pleasant report of all things, to which any addition
of mine would be superfluous. My present endeavours are directed
towards recalling my thoughts, cropping their wings, drilling
them into correct discipline, and forcing them to settle to some
useful work: they are idle, and keep taking the train down to
London, or making a foray over the Border--especially are they
prone to perpetrate that last excursion; and who, indeed, that
has once seen Edinburgh, with its couchant crag-lion, but must
see it again in dreams, waking or sleeping? My dear sir, do riot
think I blaspheme, when I tell you that your great London, as
compared to Dun-Edin, 'mine own romantic town,' is as prose
compared to poetry, or as a great rumbling, rambling, heavy epic
compared to a lyric, brief, bright, clear and vital as a flash of
lightning. You have nothing like Scott's monument, or, if you had
that, and all the glories of architecture assembled together, you
have nothing like Arthur's Seat, and, above all, you have riot
the Scotch national character; and it is that grand character
after all which gives the land its true charm, its true
greatness.

On her return from Scotland, she again spent a few days with her
friends, and then made her way to Haworth.

"July 15th.

I got home very well, and full glad was I that no insuperable
obstacle had deferred my return one single day longer. Just at
the foot of Bridgehouse hill, I met John, staff in hand; he
fortunately saw me in the cab, stopped, and informed me he was
setting off to B----, by Mr. Bronte's orders, to see how I was,
for that he had been quite miserable ever since he got Miss
----'s letter. I found, on my arrival, that Papa had worked
himself up to a sad pitch of nervous excitement and alarm, in
which Martha and Tabby were but too obviously joining him. . . .
The house looks very clean, and, I think, is not damp; there is,
however, still a great deal to do in the way of settling and
arranging,--enough to keep me disagreeably busy for some time to
come. I was truly thankful to find Papa pretty well, but I fear
he is just beginning to show symptoms of a cold: my cold
continues better. . . . An article in a newspaper I found
awaiting me on my arrival, amused me; it was a paper published
while I was in London. I enclose it to give you a laugh; it
professes to be written by an Author jealous of Authoresses. I do
not know who he is, but he must be one of those I met. . . . The
'ugly men,' giving themselves 'Rochester airs,' is no bad hit;
some of those alluded to will not like it."

While Miss Bronte was staying in London, she was induced to sit
for her portrait to Richmond. It is a crayon drawing; in my
judgment an admirable likeness, though of course there is some
difference of opinion on the subject; and, as usual, those best
acquainted with the original were least satisfied with the
resemblance. Mr. Bronte thought that it looked older than
Charlotte did, and that her features had not been flattered; but
he acknowledged that the expression was wonderfully good and
life-like. She sent the following amusing account of the arrival
of the portrait to the donor:--

"Aug. 1st.

"The little box for me came at the same time as the large one for
Papa. When you first told me that you had had the Duke's picture
framed, and had given it to me, I felt half provoked with you for
performing such a work of supererogation, but now, when I see it
again, I cannot but acknowledge that, in so doing, you were
felicitously inspired. It is his very image, and, as Papa said
when he saw it, scarcely in the least like the ordinary
portraits; not only the expression, but even the form of the head
is different, and of a far nobler character. I esteem it a
treasure. The lady who left the parcel for me was, it seems, Mrs.
Gore. The parcel contained one of her works, 'The Hamiltons,' and
a very civil and friendly note, in which I find myself addressed
as 'Dear Jane.' Papa seems much pleased with the portrait, as do
the few other persons who have seen it, with one notable
exception; viz., our old servant, who tenaciously maintains that
it is not like--that it is too old-looking; but as she, with
equal tenacity, asserts that the Duke of Wellington's picture is
a portrait of 'the Master' (meaning Papa), I am afraid not much
weight is to be ascribed to her opinion: doubtless she confuses
her recollections of me as I was in childhood with present
impressions. Requesting always to be very kindly remembered to
your mother and sisters, I am, yours very thanklessly (according
to desire),

"C. BRONTE."

It may easily be conceived that two people living together as Mr.
Bronte and his daughter did, almost entirely dependent on each
other for society, and loving each other deeply (although not
demonstratively)--that these two last members of a family would
have their moments of keen anxiety respecting each other's
health. There is not one letter of hers which I have read, that
does not contain some mention of her father's state in this
respect. Either she thanks God with simple earnestness that he is
well, or some infirmities of age beset him, and she mentions the
fact, and then winces away from it, as from a sore that will not
bear to be touched. He, in his turn, noted every indisposition of
his one remaining child's, exaggerated its nature, and sometimes
worked himself up into a miserable state of anxiety, as in the
case she refers to, when, her friend having named in a letter to
him that his daughter was suffering from a bad cold, he could not
rest till he despatched a messenger, to go, "staff in hand" a
distance of fourteen miles, and see with his own eyes what was
her real state, and return and report.

She evidently felt that this natural anxiety on the part of her
father and friend increased the nervous depression of her own
spirits, whenever she was ill; and in the following letter she
expresses her strong wish that the subject of her health should
be as little alluded to as possible.

"Aug. 7th.

"I am truly sorry that I allowed the words to which you refer to
escape my lips, since their effect on you has been unpleasant;
but try to chase every shadow of anxiety from your mind, and,
unless the restraint be very disagreeable to you, permit me to
add an earnest request that you will broach the subject to me no
more. It is the undisguised and most harassing anxiety of others
that has fixed in my mind thoughts and expectations which must
canker wherever they take root; against which every effort of
religion or philosophy must at times totally fail; and
subjugation to which is a cruel terrible fate--the fate, indeed,
of him whose life was passed under a sword suspended by a
horse-hair. I have had to entreat Papa's consideration on this
point. My nervous system is soon wrought on. I should wish to
keep it in rational strength and coolness; but to do so I must
determinedly resist the kindly-meant, but too irksome expression
of an apprehension, for the realisation or defeat of which I have
no possible power to be responsible. At present, I am pretty
well. Thank God! Papa, I trust, is no worse, but he complains of
weakness."



CHAPTER VII

Her father was always anxious to procure every change that was
possible for her, seeing, as he did, the benefit which she
derived from it, however reluctant she might have been to leave
her home and him beforehand. This August she was invited to go
for a week to the neighbourhood of Bowness, where Sir James Kay
Shuttleworth had taken a house; but she says, "I consented to go,
with reluctance, chiefly to please Papa, whom a refusal on my
part would much have annoyed; but I dislike to leave him. I trust
he is not worse, but his complaint is still weakness. It is not
right to anticipate evil, and to be always looking forward with
an apprehensive spirit; but I think grief is a two-edged sword,
it cuts both ways; the memory of one loss is the anticipation of
another."

It was during this visit at the Briery--Lady Kay Shuttleworth
having kindly invited me to meet her there--that I first made
acquaintance with Miss Bronte. If I copy out part of a letter,
which I wrote soon after this to a friend, who was deeply
interested in her writings, I shall probably convey my first
impressions more truly and freshly than by amplifying what I then
said into a longer description.

"Dark when I got to Windermere station; a drive along the level
road to Low-wood; then a stoppage at a pretty house, and then a
pretty drawing-room, in which were Sir James and Lady Kay
Shuttleworth, and a little lady in a black-silk gown, whom I
could not see at first for the dazzle in the room; she came up
and shook hands with me at once. I went up to unbonnet, etc.;
came down to tea; the little lady worked away and hardly spoke
but I had time for a good look at her. She is (as she calls
herself) UNDEVELOPED, thin, and more than half a head shorter
than I am; soft brown hair, not very dark; eyes (very good and
expressive, looking straight and open at you) of the same colour
as her hair; a large mouth; the forehead square, broad and rather
over-hanging. She has a very sweet voice; rather hesitates in
choosing her expressions, but when chosen they seem without an
effort admirable, and just befitting the occasion; there is
nothing overstrained, but perfectly simple. . . . After
breakfast, we four went out on the lake, and Miss Bronte agreed
with me in liking Mr. Newman's Soul, and in liking Modern
Painters, and the idea of the Seven Lamps; and she told me about
Father Newman's lectures at the Oratory in a very quiet, concise,
graphic way. . . . She is more like Miss ---- than any one in her
ways--if you can fancy Miss ---- to have gone through suffering
enough to have taken out every spark of merriment, and to be shy
and silent from the habit of extreme, intense solitude. Such a
life as Miss Bronte's I never heard of before. ---- described her
home to me as in a village of grey stone houses, perched up on
the north side of a bleak moor, looking over sweeps of bleak
moors, etc., etc.

"We were only three days together; the greater part of which was
spent in driving about, in order to show Miss Bronte the
Westmoreland scenery, as she had never been there before. We were
both included in an invitation to drink tea quietly at Fox How;
and I then saw how severely her nerves were taxed by the effort
of going amongst strangers. We knew beforehand that the number of
the party would not exceed twelve; but she suffered the whole day
from an acute headache brought on by apprehension of the evening.

"Brierly Close was situated high above Low-wood, and of course
commanded an extensive view and wide horizon. I was struck by
Miss Bronte's careful examination of the shape of the clouds and
the signs of the heavens, in which she read, as from a book, what
the coming weather would be. I told her that I saw she must have
a view equal in extent at her own home. She said that I was
right, but that the character of the prospect from Haworth was
very different; that I had no idea what a companion the sky
became to any one living in solitude,--more than any inanimate
object on earth,--more than the moors themselves."

The following extracts convey some of her own impressions and
feelings respecting this visit:--

"You said I should stay longer than a week in Westmoreland; you
ought by this time to know me better. Is it my habit to keep
dawdling at a place long after the time I first fixed on for
departing? I have got home, and I am thankful to say Papa
seems,--to say the least,--no worse than when I left him, yet I
wish he were stronger. My visit passed off very well; I am glad I
went. The scenery is, of course, grand; could I have wandered
about amongst those hills ALONE, I could have drank in all their
beauty; even in a carriage with company, it was very well. Sir
James was all the while as kind and friendly as he could be: he
is in much better health. . . . Miss Martineau was from home; she
always leaves her house at Ambleside during the Lake season, to
avoid the influx of visitors to which she would otherwise be
subject.

"If I could only have dropped unseen out of the carriage, and
gone away by myself in amongst those grand hills and sweet dales,
I should have drank in the full power of this glorious scenery.
In company this can hardly be. Sometimes, while ---- was warning
me against the faults of the artist-class, all the while vagrant
artist instincts were busy in the mind of his listener.

"I forget to tell you that, about a week before I went to
Westmoreland, there came an invitation to Harden Grange; which,
of course, I declined. Two or three days after, a large party
made their appearance here, consisting of Mrs. F---- and sundry
other ladies and two gentlemen; one tall and stately, black
haired and whiskered, who turned out to be Lord John
Manners,--the other not so distinguished-looking, shy, and a
little queer, who was Mr. Smythe, the son of Lord Strangford. I
found Mrs. F. a true lady in manners and appearance, very gentle
and unassuming. Lord John Manners brought in his hand a brace of
grouse for Papa, which was a well-timed present: a day or two
before Papa had been wishing for some."

To these extracts I must add one other from a letter referring to
this time. It is addressed to Miss Wooler, the kind friend of
both her girlhood and womanhood, who had invited her to spend a
fortnight with her at her cottage lodgings.

"Haworth, Sept. 27th, 1850.

"When I tell you that I have already been to the Lakes this
season, and that it is scarcely more than a month since I
returned, you will understand that it is no longer within my
option to accept your kind invitation. I wish I could have gone
to you. I have already had my excursion, and there is an end of
it. Sir James Kay Shuttleworth is residing near Windermere, at a
house called the 'Briery,' and it was there I was staying for a
little time this August. He very kindly showed me the
neighbourhood, as it can be seen from a carriage, and I discerned
that the Lake country is a glorious region, of which I had only
seen the similitude in dreams, waking or sleeping. Decidedly I
find it does not agree with me to prosecute the search of the
picturesque in a carriage. A waggon, a spring-cart, even a
post-chaise might do; but the carriage upsets everything. I
longed to slip out unseen, and to run away by myself in amongst
the hills and dales. Erratic and vagrant instincts tormented me,
and these I was obliged to control or rather suppress for fear of
growing in any degree enthusiastic, and thus drawing attention to
the 'lioness'--the authoress.

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