Brontës (55 page)

While Charlotte fought a losing battle to keep up a semblance of normality at Roe Head, her father was also coming under increasing pressure at Haworth. Patrick's beloved Auxiliary Bible Society had become the latest victim in the antipathy between Baptists and Anglicans. General meetings had become impossible, due to ‘unpleasant differences between the officers and friends', though it was still hoped to salvage something by holding a meeting sanctioned by Patrick and the Wesleyan Methodists.
¹
The hard-line sects were flourishing in Haworth. The Baptists had raised over £1500 to establish a school for the religious instruction of their children and the Primitive Methodists were engaged in building a brand new chapel, which was formally opened on 20 November 1836.
²
Worse still, the vexed question of church rates had come to the fore again as the date of the meeting adjourned from the previous year approached. Patrick seems to have been determined to keep a low profile. He allowed a meeting to take place in the church, which was
advertised by placard as an ‘opportunity of stating in vestry assembled whether they did really consider it right for one sect to tax all others to support its own religion'. He appears to have taken no part in the meeting, which was chaired by John Hartley, and voted almost unanimously to adjourn the laying of the 1835 rate to September 1837, despite vociferous interventions by George Taylor, one of the churchwardens. Nor did Patrick allow his churchwardens to attempt to raise a new rate for the current year.
³

The softening of his attitude, which had gradually taken place over the year, was made apparent in a letter he wrote to the
Leeds Mercury
at the end of October. He declared once more that he had never favoured church rates in their present form but that he still considered that they were necessary as long as the church was ‘a kind of public property'. He argued that vestry meetings, which organized parish affairs, were held for the benefit of all denominations, Dissenters owned pews in the church for which they received rents and all the parish benefited from the giving out of public notices in church, the church clock and the church bells. Most telling of all, so long as Dissenters had burial places in the church and churchyard, which had to be kept in good repair, then they should make a contribution to their upkeep.
⁴
Instead of relying on arguments from the Scriptures, Patrick had turned to the pragmatic considerations which could justify laying a rate.

Despite his defence of the system, Patrick clearly no longer desired any confrontation. A few weeks later, at the beginning of December, he quietly opened a voluntary subscription to defray the expenses of the church. If he had hoped to avoid publicity, this was denied him, for one of the Dissenters, probably John Winterbotham, who was then agitating to start an Anti-Church Rates Society in Bradford, wrote to the
Leeds Mercury
trumpeting ‘the Death of a Church Rate'. While taking the opportunity to praise Patrick and the Dissenting ministers for pledging themselves to a peaceful pursuit of their vocations, the anonymous author attacked Patrick's curate, William Hodgson.

The only drawback … arises from the wild zeal and boisterous denunciations of a certain young man, who has lately assumed the gown, and who discredits his holy vocation by repeated
tirades
and invective against those who do not attend the place where he is permitted to officiate. Having been suddenly raised from a very humble situation in life, his head seems too weak to
bear the elevation … There is nothing more seemly in young men, and especially young ministers, than modesty. There is nothing more unbecoming the pulpit than a bold, condemnatory spirit.
⁵

This succeeded in provoking Hodgson into an indignant and defensive reply. While acknowledging his own humble birth, he emphatically denied that he had anathematized the Dissenters:

The reason, I believe, of these accusations, is my preaching on certain doctrines, which have not a place in [his] creed; which are on Ecclesiastical Establishment, Episcopacy, Infant Baptism, the use of a Liturgy, and the purity of our Formularies.
⁶

Hodgson somewhat undermined his defence against the accusations by then submitting the same letter to the Tory
Leeds Intelligencer
, requesting its inclusion as ‘an exhibition of a few “pious frauds” of a Dissenter'.
⁷

The Christmas vacation, which reunited the Brontë family at the end of December 1836, was marred when a terrible accident befell Tabby Aykroyd, their servant for the last ten years. A few days after Charlotte and Anne's return home, Tabby had gone down the village on an errand, slipped on a patch of ice and fallen heavily. As it was dark, it was some time before she was able to attract attention and was carried into the druggist's shop nearby. There it was discovered that she had completely shattered and dislocated her leg. No surgeon could be got to set the fracture till six o'clock the following morning, so she was brought back to the parsonage in ‘a very doubtful and dangerous state'. ‘Of course we are all exceedingly distressed at the circumstance', Charlotte told Ellen, ‘for she was like one of our own family'. The girls rallied round, performing all her household tasks between them, with the occasional assistance of ‘a person [who] has dropped in now and then to do the drudgery', and taking Tabby's nursing upon themselves.
⁸
This Aunt Branwell strongly deprecated, urging that Tabby should be sent to her sister's house until she was fully recovered. The girls insisted that it was their duty to nurse Tabby in her old age and infirmity when she had looked after them so well for so many years. There then followed a dramatic clash of wills, Aunt Branwell urging practical difficulties and economy, the sisters urging compassion and sentiment. The war of words turned into a war of action: the girls went on strike, refusing to eat until their aunt at last gave way
and allowed them the privilege of nursing Tabby back to health in their own house. Tabby remained in a very delicate state throughout the holiday, so that Charlotte was reluctantly obliged to cancel a visit by Ellen: ‘I would urge your visit yet, I would entreat and press it – but the thought comes across me “Should Tabby die while you are in the house?” I should never forgive myself –'.
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Fortunately, and probably due to the careful nursing of her former charges, Tabby did eventually recover and was able to resume most of her household duties.

Despite the extra burden of work caused by Tabby's illness, the Christmas holidays saw a flurry of literary activity. Anne's earliest extant poem, which, from its polished nature, was clearly not the first she had ever written, dates from this time. ‘Verses by Lady Geralda' is also the first of many poems by both Anne and Emily depicting a typical Gondal scenario: an orphan girl lamenting the fact that the beauties of nature no longer have power to soothe her troubled spirit.

Why, when I hear the stormy breath

Of the wild winter wind

Rushing o'er the mountain heath,

Does sadness fill my mind?

For long ago I loved to lie           

Upon the pathless moor,

To hear the wild wind rushing by

With never ceasing roar;

Its sound was music then to me;

Its wild and lofty voice

Made my heart beat exultingly

And my whole soul rejoice.

But now, how different is the sound?

It takes another tone,

And howls along the barren ground

With melancholy moan.
¹⁰

Resonant with echoes of Wordsworth's ‘Intimations of Immortality' ode, the poem is the only glimpse we have of Gondal at this time. It shows that
Emily and Anne had not allowed their stories to lapse in Anne's absence and that Gondal, like Angria, had a setting which owed at least something to the moorlands around their own beloved home.

Meanwhile, Branwell was bringing the affairs of Angria to a new climax: Northangerland's reign of terror was coming to an end. Inspired by a powerful speech by Warner Howard Warner, those Angrians still loyal to Zamorna won a great victory over Northangerland and were now bent on redeeming Angria from his clutches.
¹¹
Branwell did not envisage Zamorna's return from exile till the summer, but for the first time in many years, Charlotte intervened and forced the pace of events. Perhaps surprisingly, it was not the fact that Branwell had sent her beloved Zamorna off into exile which goaded her into a response, but that he had killed Zamorna's wife, Mary Percy. She had died of grief and loneliness in exile, divorced and disgraced by her husband and ruined by her father. Branwell had described her deathbed quite movingly, in terms foreshadowing Cathy's death in
Wuthering Heights
.

This was not like the death bed of her Mother there was no mingling of Heaven with earth nothing of that Angelic hope of glory, that real triumph over death This was the end of a Child of earth all whose soul and spirit were rooted in earth and perishing on being torn away from it Her thoughts were expressed plainly by her a day or two before this time

– It does not matter where I am going I know I
am
going and I know
from whom
I am going –

Death in such a state is more terrible than any anticipations of the future can be[.]
¹²

Charlotte, away at Roe Head, had not believed it possible that Branwell would kill his favourite heroine and had waited in some suspense to know whether he would actually do so.
¹³
It had evidently taken some steeling of his nerve, though the deathbed scenes were among the best he had ever written. ‘Reader I cannot do otherwise than drop a tear to her memory', he wrote, ‘for recollect that I it was whose pen first brought her to your notice who from her rising to her setting have so long recorded the different phases of her glory.'
¹⁴
Branwell was ruthless enough to sacrifice Mary for the effect it would have on his two protagonists, Northangerland and Zamorna: for him, it was a necessary part of their story. Charlotte, however, was appalled and dismayed by Mary's fate. Just as she had done in
their earliest childhood writings, she determined to make Mary come to life again. It was no longer acceptable to ascribe this to magical means, so Charlotte justified Mary's resurrection by declaring that Branwell's author, Lord Richton, had spread the rumour of Mary's death to rouse the Angrians to greater fury against their oppressor, Northangerland. ‘In our land we take methods such as were never known in the political world before for exciting a party to our wish.'
¹⁵

In the first long narrative she had written for over two years, she described how Mary had been saved from death by the brief reappearance, in disguise, of Zamorna whom she had thought drowned at sea on his voyage into exile. Having given Mary a reason to live, Zamorna then moved on to reveal himself to his faithful allies and inspire the Angrians to victory once more.
¹⁶
The story is confidently told and, despite changes of scene and character, is much more closely interwoven than many of her previous efforts. This time Charlotte had no trouble choosing her subject, nor in following it through to its conclusion.

There is no doubt that Branwell regarded Charlotte as playing a very subsidiary role in the partnership. His reaction to Charlotte's intervention was to ignore it almost completely. Mary remained dead, as Charlotte was soon forced to acknowledge, though Zamorna's return from exile to lead his troops to victory over Northangerland does seem to have been brought forward.
¹⁷

Charlotte was unmoved by Branwell's contempt. The pent-up flow of creativity which had been released continued unabated throughout January, sparking off a number of long poems reflecting on the trials of war-torn Angria and its king.
¹⁸
However it was no longer simply the attraction of the current storyline which inspired her. During the vacation, Charlotte and Branwell decided that they should attempt to turn their writing skills to good account and, if possible, earn a living from them. To do this they needed the advice and judgement of those who were already professional writers, so both embarked upon a course of letter-writing to their literary idols. On 29 December 1836 Charlotte wrote to Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate, sending him some of her poems and requesting his opinion of them. Charlotte's letter is not extant, but Southey referred to it as ‘flighty', an epithet which is also entirely appropriate for the letter she wrote some years later to Hartley Coleridge,
¹⁹
Southey's nephew and son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was also fulsome in its praise of Southey himself, if his quotes from her letter are an indication of its content. As Southey was away
from Keswick at the time, Charlotte was forced to wait over two months for his reply. When it finally came, it was not very encouraging.

you live in a visionary world, & seem to imagine that this is my case also, when you speak of my ‘stooping from a throne of light & glory' … You who so ardently desire ‘to be for ever known' as a poetess, might have had your ardour in some degree abated, by seeing a poet in the decline of life … You evidently possess, & in no inconsiderable degree what Wordsworth calls ‘the faculty of verse'. I am not depreciating it when I say that in these times it is not rare. Many volumes of poems are now published every year without attracting public attention, any one of which, if it had appeared half a century ago, would have obtained a high reputation for its author. Whoever therefore is ambitious of distinction in this way, ought to be prepared for disappointment.