Brontës (150 page)

Mrs Gaskell was obliged to make their excuses for her non-appearance as best she could and they left without achieving the object of their visit. Mrs Gaskell ascribed Charlotte's paranoia on encountering strangers to what Charlotte herself described as her ‘almost repulsive' plainness. ‘I notice that after a stranger has once looked at my face, he is careful not to let his eyes wander to that part of the room again!' ‘A more untrue idea never entered into any one's head', Mrs Gaskell commented, going on to describe how Charlotte's ‘pleasant countenance, sweet voice, and gentle, timid manners' had won over at least one of her male guests who had a preconceived dislike of because her work.
²⁴

Another evening, two gentlemen were invited to dinner in the anticipation that they and Charlotte would get on well together. Unfortunately, Charlotte's response to yet more strangers was to draw into her shell, answering their questions in monosyllables, until they gave up the unequal task and talked to Mrs Gaskell instead. During their conversation, however,
they began to discuss Thackeray's lectures, which he had recently repeated in Manchester, and Charlotte again forgot herself and entered warmly into the argument. ‘She gave Mr Thackeray the benefit of some of her piercingly keen observation', Mrs Gaskell later told a friend. ‘My word! he had reason when he said he was afraid of her.' Speaking with all the bitterness of one who had watched a much-loved and revered brother destroy himself, she had attacked Thackeray's light-hearted treatment of the novelist Henry Fielding's character and vices. ‘Had Thackeray owned a son grown or growing up: – a son brilliant but reckless – would he of [sic] spoken in that light way of courses that lead to disgrace and the grave?… I believe if only once the spectacle of a promising life blasted in the outset by wild ways – had passed close under his eyes – he never
could
have spoken with such levity of what led to its piteous destruction.'
²⁵

On Monday evening, 25 April, the Gaskells took Charlotte to the Theatre Royal where the ‘Manchester Shakspearian Society' were putting on a production of
Twelfth Night
for the benefit of the Manchester Free Library. Charlotte's discreet silence on the subject is perhaps explained by the lambasting that the production received in the local press: Orsino was ‘too boisterous and loud, with an artificial pitch of voice', Antonio ‘couldn't be heard' and Olivia ‘merely walked through her part'. As was the usual practice at the time, the play had been heavily cut and the text bowdlerized, so the evening had to be filled out with an opening address (on ‘The Emancipation of Knowledge') and a closing farce,
Raising the Wind
.
²⁶

Though Mrs Gaskell clearly felt that the visit was a failure in some respects, Charlotte had actually thoroughly enjoyed herself. They parted on more than friendly terms: ‘She is so true, she wins respect, deep respect, from the very first, – and then comes hearty liking, – and last of all comes love', Mrs Gaskell told a friend. ‘I thoroughly loved her before she left'.
²⁷
Charlotte, too, looked back on the visit as one cementing their friendship. ‘The week I spent in Manchester has impressed me as the very brightest and healthiest I have known for these five years past', she wrote to her kind hostess, signing another letter, ‘Yours, with true attachment'. Before she left, she extracted a promise that, at her father's ‘particular desire', Mrs Gaskell would visit her at Haworth before the summer was out.
²⁸

Charlotte's visit to the Gaskells had lasted a bare week. She returned home from Manchester via Brookroyd, where she spent a few days with Ellen Nussey who was feeling low and miserable about her own future. After many months of indecision and prevarication, she had at last decided
to accept an invitation to visit the Reverend Francis Upjohn, the sixty-six-year-old vicar of Gorleston in Suffolk, and his wife, Sarah. They had made a proposal, which Charlotte described as ‘peculiar' and Patrick as ‘not
delicately
expressed', that Ellen should ‘go and spend some time with them on a sort of experiment visit – that if the result were mutually satisfactory – they would wish in a sense to adopt you – with the prospect of leaving you property – amount of course indefinite'.
²⁹
Mary Taylor took a typically robust view of the proposal, writing a ‘reply' on Ellen's behalf.

Your coarseness of feeling that allows you to [pay] me the greater part of my wages only after your death, your evident dishonesty in leaving the engagement so indefinite that I might do two women's work for twenty years to come & then have no \legal/ claim either on you or your heirs, yr evident notion that an expensive dress & diet is to compensate for the absence of money wages, all make me think that your feelings, principles & pleasures are very different to mine, and there could be no companionship in the case.
³⁰

Always afraid that her financial future looked bleak, especially when her mother died, Ellen had not wished to dismiss the prospect of a comfortable home out of hand. Charlotte's visit bolstered her confidence, which had quailed even further at the thought of staying in a haunted house, and at the end of May she set off for Great Yarmouth to pay her ‘experiment visit'. Before her month was up, however, Ellen had had such a ‘hard time of it and some rough experience' with ‘these strange, unhappy people', that she sought sanctuary at her brother Joshua's rectory at Oundle.
³¹

For Charlotte, the return to Haworth could not be a happy one. Mr Nicholls had still a month to go before he came to the end of his engagement and his presence was a continual source of strain and reproach. Sunday, 15 May, was an ordeal not to be forgotten. ‘It seems as if I were to be punished for my doubts about the nature and truth of poor Mr N—'s regard', Charlotte wrote to Ellen.

Having ventured on Whitsunday to stay the sacrament – I got a lesson not to be repeated. He struggled – faltered – then lost command over himself – stood before my eyes and in the sight of all the communicants white, shaking, voiceless – Papa was not there – thank God! Joseph Redman spoke some words to him – he made a great effort – but could only with difficulty whisper and falter through the service. I suppose he thought; this would be the last time; he goes
either this week or the next. I heard the women sobbing round – and I could not quite check my own tears.

What had happened was reported to Papa either by Joseph Redman or John Brown – it excited only anger – and such expressions as ‘unmanly driveller'. Compassion or relenting is no more to be looked for than sap from firewood.

Charlotte felt ‘somewhat sick physically, and not very blithe morally' as she recounted this misadventure to Ellen the next day. She could no longer doubt either the strength of Mr Nicholls' devotion or his own efforts to conceal it; there must have been born, too, a sense of fellow feeling with him. She had once thought that they had no congenial tastes and feelings: she could no longer doubt that they at least shared the capacity for suffering in the face of unrequited love. In handwriting that showed all too vividly the evident distress she felt, Charlotte added:

I never saw a battle more sternly fought with the feelings than Mr N— fights with his – and when he yields momentarily – you are almost sickened by the sense of the strain upon him. However he is to go – and I cannot speak to him or look at him or comfort him a whit – and I must submit. Providence is over all – that is the only consolation
³²

A few days later there was a certain satisfaction in discovering that a subscription was being raised in the township to offer a testimonial of respect to the departing curate. There was much curiosity as to the reasons for his departure, which had never been made public. Obviously, gossip had been rife since Mr Nicholls had broken down so publicly during the communion service, but the curate neither expected nor sought sympathy. The churchwardens felt obliged to interrogate him, putting the question plainly to him, ‘Why was he going? Was it Mr Brontës fault or his own? His own – he answered. Did he blame Mr Brontë? [“]No: he did not: if anybody was wrong it was himself.” Was he willing to go? “No: it gave him great pain.'”
³³
With more loyalty and generosity of spirit than truth, Mr Nicholls maintained this point to the end of his life, telling Clement Shorter forty years later that there was never ‘any quarrel between Mr Brontë & myself – an unkind or angry word never passed between us – we parted as friends when I left Haworth – my leaving was solely on my own account – I was not driven away by him – I always felt that he was perfectly justified in his objections to my union with his daughter.'
³⁴

While lauding Mr Nicholls' sense of honour and feeling, Charlotte could not ignore his obstinacy and sullenness. Patrick had spoken to him ‘with
constrained
civility, but still with
civility
' at the Whitsuntide tea-drinkings, only to be cut short by his curate. ‘This sort of treatment offered in public is what Papa never will forget or forgive —', Charlotte wrote despairingly to Ellen, ‘it inspires him with a silent bitterness not to be expressed.'
³⁵

The long ordeal was now drawing to a close. On the evening of 25 May, a deputation of the local gentry and some of the neighbouring clergy gathered in the National School room where Michael Merrall, on behalf of the congregation, teachers and scholars of the church and its Sunday schools, presented Mr Nicholls with a handsome, inscribed gold watch.
³⁶
Conveniently, Patrick was not very well, so Charlotte advised him to stay away. The following evening Mr Nicholls called at the parsonage to hand over the deeds of the National School, which had been his pride and joy, and to say goodbye.

They were busy cleaning – washing the paint &c. in the dining-room so he did not find me there. I would not go into the parlour to speak to him in Papa's presence. He went out thinking he was not to see me – And indeed till the very last moment – I thought it best not – But perceiving that he stayed long before going out at the gate – and remembering his long grief I took courage and went out trembling and miserable. I found him leaning again [st] the garden-door in a paroxysm of anguish – sobbing as women never sob. Of course I went straight to him. Very few words were interchanged – those few barely articulate: several things I should have liked to ask him were swept entirely from my memory. Poor fellow! but he wanted such hope and such encouragement as I could not give him. Still I trust he must know now that I am not cruelly blind and indifferent to his constancy and grief … However he is gone – gone – and there's an end ofit.
³⁷

In the emotion of the moment Charlotte had not even asked Mr Nicholls where he was taking up his next post, so the chances of her learning about his future fate were remote. He left Haworth quietly at six o'clock the following morning: it is possible that he did so without even a new job in prospect, for he was not appointed to the curacy of the little village of Kirk Smeaton, near Pontefract, until August.
³⁸
He had performed his duties in Haworth faithfully to the end, taking the services in church the preceding Sunday – ‘it was a cruel struggle' – and his last duty, appropriately enough
a burial, two days before his departure. His successor, the unlucky George de Renzy, had already been appointed and performed his first duties two days later on 29 May.
³⁹

Racked by misery and guilt, Charlotte tried to find consolation, as she had always done, in occupation. Though she had apparently told Mrs Gaskell that she was ‘not going to write again for some time', she began the rough draft of a new story, ‘Willie Ellin', hoping to lose herself in her imagination.
⁴⁰
Reading, too, was a refuge and on the evening of Mr Nicholls' departure a new box of books arrived from Cornhill, a gift which could hardly have been better timed. With it came a letter from a Mrs Holland which touched Charlotte deeply. She had read
Villette
and found in it a consolation for her own poignant and bitter grief. ‘This hope sustained me while I wrote –', Charlotte replied the next day, ‘that while many of the prosperous or very young might turn distastefully from the rather sad page – some – tested by what you well term “the pitiless trials of life” – might hear in it no harsh and unsympathetic voice.' Writing with the scorching memory of Mr Nicholls' great unhappiness still new upon her, Charlotte poignantly commented that ‘One assurance that we have done good; one testimony that we have assuaged pain – … comes more healingly to the heart than all the eulogiums on intellect that ever were uttered'.
⁴¹

More than ever at this time Charlotte needed the companionship of someone of her own age and sex. Ellen Nussey was still at Oundle and unlikely to return for at least another month, so Charlotte applied to Mrs Gaskell, even though it was such a short time since her own visit to Manchester. She was extremely sensitive about the contrast between that visit and what she had to offer her friend. ‘When you take leave of the domestic circle and turn your back on Plymouth Grove to come to Haworth,' she warned Mrs Gaskell, ‘you must do it in the spirit which might sustain you in case you were setting out on a brief trip to the back woods of America. Leaving behind your husband, children, and civilization, you must come out to barbarism, loneliness, and liberty. The change will perhaps do good, if not too prolonged …'
⁴²

Before Mrs Gaskell could arrive, Charlotte's health, which had been remarkably good since she had completed
Villette
, gave way under the intolerable stress of the last month. She caught a cold which developed into severe influenza, compelling her to take to her bed for ten days, and obliging Patrick to write on her behalf to postpone Mrs Gaskell's visit indefinitely. By 12 June, she was well enough to write a brief note to George
Smith ‘lest my silence should be misunderstood', though still suffering from acutely painful headaches.
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