Book: The Life of Charlotte Bronte

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"September 19th.

"Yes! I am thankful to say my husband is in improved health and
spirits. It makes me content and grateful to hear him from time
to time avow his happiness in the brief, plain phrase of
sincerity. My own life is more occupied than it used to be I have
not so much time for thinking I am obliged to be more practical,
for my dear Arthur is a very practical, as well as a very
punctual and methodical man. Every morning he is in the National
School by nine o'clock; he gives the children religious
instruction till half-past ten. Almost every afternoon he pays
visits amongst the poor parishioners. Of course, he often finds a
little work for his wife to do, and I hope she is not sorry to
help him. I believe it is not bad for me that his bent should be
so wholly towards matters of life and active usefulness; so
little inclined to the literary and contemplative. As to his
continued affection and kind attentions it does not become me to
say much of them; but they neither change nor diminish."

Her friend and bridesmaid came to pay them a visit in October. I
was to have gone also, but I allowed some little obstacle to
intervene, to my lasting regret.

"I say nothing about the war; but when I read of its horrors, I
cannot help thinking that it is one of the greatest curses that
ever fell upon mankind. I trust it may not last long, for it
really seems to me that no glory to be gained can compensate for
the sufferings which must be endured. This may seem a little
ignoble and unpatriotic; but I think that as we advance towards
middle age, nobleness and patriotism have a different
signification to us to that which we accept while young."

"You kindly inquire after Papa. He is better, and seems to gain
strength as the weather gets colder; indeed, of late years health
has always been better in winter than in summer. We are all
indeed pretty well; and, for my own part, it is long since I have
known such comparative immunity from headache, etc., as during
the last three months. My life is different from what it used to
be. May God make me thankful for it! I have a good, kind,
attached husband; and every day my own attachment to him grows
stronger."

Late in the autumn, Sir James Kay Shuttleworth crossed the
border-hills that separate Lancashire from Yorkshire, and spent
two or three days with them.

About this time, Mr. Nicholls was offered a living of much
greater value than his curacy at Haworth, and in many ways the
proposal was a very advantageous one; but he felt himself bound
to Haworth as long as Mr. Bronte lived. Still, this offer gave
his wife great and true pleasure, as a proof of the respect in
which her husband was held.

"Nov. 29.

"I intended to have written a line yesterday, but just as I was
sitting down for the purpose, Arthur called to me to take a walk.
We set off, not intending to go far; but, though wild and cloudy,
it was fair in the morning; when we had got about half a mile on
the moors, Arthur suggested the idea of the waterfall; after the
melted snow, he said, it would be fine. I had often wished to see
it in its winter power,--so we walked on. It was fine indeed; a
perfect torrent racing over the rocks, white and beautiful! It
began to rain while we were watching it, and we returned home
under a streaming sky. However, I enjoyed the walk inexpressibly,
and would not have missed the spectacle on any account"

She did not achieve this walk of seven or eight miles, in such
weather, with impunity. She began to shiver soon after her return
home, in spite of every precaution, and had a bad lingering sore
throat and cold, which hung about her; and made her thin and
weak.

"Did I tell you that our poor little Flossy is dead? She drooped
for a single day, and died quietly in the night without pain. The
loss even of a dog was very saddening; yet, perhaps, no dog ever
had a happier life, or an easier death."

On Christmas-day she and her husband walked to the poor old woman
(whose calf she had been set to seek in former and less happy
days), carrying with them a great spice-cake to make glad her
heart. On Christmas-day many a humble meal in Haworth was made
more plentiful by her gifts.

Early in the new year (1855), Mr. and Mrs. Nicholls went to visit
Sir James Kay Shuttleworth at Gawthorpe. They only remained two
or three days, but it so fell out that she increased her
lingering cold, by a long walk over damp ground in thin shoes.

Soon after her return, she was attacked by new sensations of
perpetual nausea, and ever-recurring faintness. After this state
of things had lasted for some time; she yielded to Mr. Nicholls'
wish that a doctor should be sent for. He came, and assigned a
natural cause for her miserable indisposition; a little patience,
and all would go right. She, who was ever patient in illness,
tried hard to bear up and bear on. But the dreadful sickness
increased and increased, till the very sight of food occasioned
nausea. "A wren would have starved on what she ate during those
last six weeks," says one. Tabby's health had suddenly and
utterly given way, and she died in this time of distress and
anxiety respecting the last daughter of the house she had served
so long. Martha tenderly waited on her mistress, and from time to
time tried to cheer her with the thought of the baby that was
coming. "I dare say I shall be glad some time," she would say;
"but I am so ill--so weary--" Then she took to her bed, too weak
to sit up. From that last couch she wrote two notes--in pencil.
The first, which has no date, is addressed to her own "Dear
Nell."

"I must write one line out of my weary bed. The news of M----'s
probable recovery came like a ray of joy to me. I am not going to
talk of my sufferings--it would be useless and painful. I want to
give you an assurance, which I know will comfort you--and that
is, that I find in my husband the tenderest nurse, the kindest
support, the best earthly comfort that ever woman had. His
patience never fails, and it is tried by sad days and broken
nights. Write and tell me about Mrs. ----'s case; how long was
she ill, and in what way? Papa--thank God!--is better. Our poor
old Tabby is DEAD and BURIED. Give my kind love to Miss Wooler.
May God comfort and help you.

"C. B. NICHOLLS."

The other--also in faint, faint pencil marks--was to her Brussels
schoolfellow.

"Feb. 15th.

"A few lines of acknowledgment your letter SHALL have, whether
well or ill. At present I am confined to my bed with illness, and
have been so for three weeks. Up to this period, since my
marriage, I have had excellent health. My husband and I live at
home with my father; of course, I could not leave HIM. He is
pretty well, better than last summer. No kinder, better husband
than mine, it seems to me, there can be in the world. I do not
want now for kind companionship in health and the tenderest
nursing in sickness. Deeply I sympathise in all you tell me about
Dr. W. and your excellent mother's anxiety. I trust he will not
risk another operation. I cannot write more now; for I am much
reduced and very weak. God bless you all.--Yours affectionately,

"C. B. NICHOLLS."

I do not think she ever wrote a line again. Long days and longer
nights went by; still the same relentless nausea and faintness,
and still borne on in patient trust. About the third week in
March there was a change; a low wandering delirium came on; and
in it she begged constantly for food and even for stimulants. She
swallowed eagerly now; but it was too late. Wakening for an
instant from this stupor of intelligence, she saw her husband's
woe-worn face, and caught the sound of some murmured words of
prayer that God would spare her. "Oh!" she whispered forth, "I am
not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so
happy."

Early on Saturday morning, March 31st, the solemn tolling of
Haworth church-bell spoke forth the fact of her death to the
villagers who had known her from a child, and whose hearts
shivered within them as they thought of the two sitting desolate
and alone in the old grey house.



CHAPTER XIV.

I have always been much struck with a passage in Mr. Forster's
Life of Goldsmith. Speaking of the scene after his death, the
writer says:--

"The staircase of Brick Court is said to have been filled with
mourners, the reverse of domestic; women without a home, without
domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had come to
weep for; outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom
he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable."

This came into my mind when I heard of some of the circumstances
attendant on Charlotte's funeral.

Few beyond that circle of hills knew that she, whom the nations
praised far off, lay dead that Easter mooring. Of kith and kin
she had more in the grave to which she was soon to be borne, than
among the living. The two mourners, stunned with their great
grief, desired not the sympathy of strangers. One member out of
most of the families in the parish was bidden to the funeral; and
it became an act of self-denial in many a poor household to give
up to another the privilege of paying their last homage to her;
and those who were excluded from the formal train of mourners
thronged the churchyard and church, to see carried forth, and
laid beside her own people, her whom, not many months ago, they
had looked at as a pale white bride, entering on a new life with
trembling happy hope.

Among those humble friends who passionately grieved over the
dead, was a village girl who had been seduced some little time
before, but who had found a holy sister in Charlotte. She had
sheltered her with her help, her counsel, her strengthening
words; had ministered to her needs in her time of trial. Bitter,
bitter was the grief of this poor young woman, when she heard
that her friend was sick unto death, and deep is her mourning
until this day. A blind girl, living some four miles from
Haworth, loved Mrs. Nicholls so dearly that, with many cries and
entreaties, she implored those about her to lead her along the
roads, and over the moor-paths, that she might hear the last
solemn words, "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in
sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life,
through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Such were the mourners over Charlotte Bronte's grave.

I have little more to say. If my readers find that I have not
said enough, I have said too much. I cannot measure or judge of
such a character as hers. I cannot map out vices, and virtues,
and debatable land. One who knew her long and well,--the "Mary"
of this Life--writes thus of her dead friend:--

"She thought much of her duty, and had loftier and clearer
notions of it than most people, and held fast to them with more
success. It was done, it seems to me, with much more difficulty
than people have of stronger nerves, and better fortunes. All her
life was but labour and pain; and she never threw down the burden
for the sake of present pleasure. I don't know what use you can
make of all I have said. I have written it with the strong desire
to obtain appreciation for her. Yet, what does it matter? She
herself appealed to the world's judgment for her use of some of
the faculties she had,--not the best,--but still the only ones
she could turn to strangers' benefit. They heartily, greedily
enjoyed the fruits of her labours, and then found out she was
much to be blamed for possessing such faculties. Why ask for a
judgment on her from such a world?"

But I turn from the critical, unsympathetic public--inclined to
judge harshly because they have only seen superficially and not
thought deeply. I appeal to that larger and more solemn public,
who know how to look with tender humility at faults and errors;
how to admire generously extraordinary genius, and how to
reverence with warm, full hearts all noble virtue. To that Public
I commit the memory of Charlotte Bronte.

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