Brontës (61 page)

On 30 January 1838, Charlotte set off from Haworth through some of the worst weather the winter had yet seen, heavy snows having fallen continuously throughout the week on top of ground already frozen hard.
⁴
It is possible that she returned, not to Roe Head but to a much smaller house where the Misses Wooler removed the school some time before Easter of
that year. Roe Head had only been taken on a lease and the small number of boarding pupils at the school must have made it difficult to justify the expense of such a large house with its huge grounds. Miss Wooler's own family circumstances were changing: her father, who lived in Dewsbury at the family home, Rouse Mill, had been ill for some time and she was increasingly called upon to visit him. A house nearer Dewsbury therefore seemed a sensible idea.

Exactly when the move took place is not known. The Christmas holiday seems the most likely time, as it would have been complicated to move during term-time. The school had certainly relocated by the Easter holidays, when Mr Wooler actually died.
⁵
Heald's House, at Dewsbury Moor, was a very different, though no less attractive building, some three or four miles away from Roe Head. A pleasant, low-built, two-storey eighteenth-century gentleman's house of red brick, it had belonged to the Reverend William Margetson Heald, vicar of Birstall. It stood on a hill above the town of Dewsbury, well out of the range of the smoke of the mills, surrounded by ample gardens. Today, the area has been heavily built up and the house is overshadowed by the ugly utilitarian blocks of Dewsbury Hospital, but even so it retains an air of shabby gentility in the quiet backwater of a wide and leafy street. Though it is on a less high and exposed site than Roe Head, it is difficult to see why Mrs Gaskell considered the situation ‘low and damp' and the air conducive to bad health.
⁶
In all probability it was her explanation for the fact that Charlotte fell ill at Heald's House. This was not the result of the relocation of the school, but rather an almost inevitable breakdown caused by Charlotte's overwrought state of mind. The monotony and sheer grind of the daily routine undermined her physical health, while her frustration and gloomy religious outlook poisoned her spirits. Added to this was an increasing sense of isolation. Anne, however little contact she had had with her while she had been at school, was now at home. Ellen was still in London, so Charlotte no longer had the prospect of her visits to enliven the dull round of teaching Even Miss Wooler was no longer a constant companion. On one occasion during the Easter holidays, when she should have been at home but had been recalled to take charge after Mr Wooler's death, Charlotte was left completely on her own for sixteen days in a row.
⁷
The solitary life did not agree with her; she soon became prey to morbid thoughts and what she herself called ‘hypochondria'. Many years later, she looked back on this period with anguish, recalling ‘the tyranny of Hypochondria' and telling Miss Wooler:

I endured it but a year – and assuredly I can never forget the concentrated anguish of certain insufferable moments and the heavy gloom of many long hours – besides the preternatural horror which seemed to clothe existence and Nature – and which made Life a continual waking Night-mare – Under such circumstances the morbid Nerves can know neither peace nor enjoyment – whatever touches – pierces them – sensation for them is all suffering – A weary burden nervous patients consequently become to those about them – they know this and it infuses a new gall – corrosive in its extreme acritude, into their bitter cup – When I was at Dewsbury-Moor – I could have been no better company for you than a stalking ghost – and I remember I felt my incapacity to
impart
pleasure fully as much as my powerlessness to
receive
it –
⁸

The long period on her own seems to have brought Charlotte to breaking point. Within a few weeks she had given up the unequal battle, writing to Ellen Nussey on 9 June 1838:

I ought to be at Dewsbury-Moor you know – but I stayed as long as I was able and at length I neither could nor dared stay any longer My health and spirits had utterly failed me and the medical man whom I consulted enjoined me if I valued my life to go home So home I went, the change has at once roused and soothed me – and I am now I trust fairly in the way to be myself again – A calm and even mind like yours Ellen cannot conceive the feelings of the shattered wretch who is now writing to you when after weeks of mental and bodily anguish not to be described something like tranquillity and ease began to dawn again.
⁹

Miss Wooler, recognizing that Charlotte had come to the end of the road, presented her with a particularly thoughtful gift, a copy of Walter Scott's poems
The Vision of Don Roderick
and
Rokeby
, on 23 May 1838, presumably the day she left.
¹⁰

That Charlotte's illness was principally in the mind was obvious from the swiftness of her recovery once she was back in the bosom of her family. She was encouraged in this by Mary and Martha Taylor, her lively friends from her own schooldays at Roe Head. They came to stay for a few days at the beginning of June, defeating Charlotte's attempt to write to Ellen.

They are making such a noise about me I can not write any more. Mary is playing on the piano. Martha is chattering as fast as her little tongue can run and Branwell is standing before her laughing at her vivacity.
¹¹

Despite the reviving gaiety at home, Charlotte was still a prey to morbid sensitivity, noting with alarm that Mary appeared far from well and that her symptoms reminded her forcibly of the consumption that had killed Maria and Elizabeth thirteen years earlier.
¹²
Charlotte was obsessed with consumption at this time, believing first of all that Anne had fallen victim to it and then, some six months later, that Mary Taylor was a sufferer. Perhaps, in her highly nervous state at Dewsbury Moor, she had talked herself into believing that she, too, had the fatal symptoms – the cough, the pain in the chest or side and the feverishness were all common enough complaints which could easily seem signs of more deadly disease.

The imaginations of Branwell and her sisters had been more productively engaged. Emily and Anne between them produced a whole stream of poems describing the captivity of Alexandrina Zenobia, her misery at her separation from her lover and the faithlessness of her former friends. Emily was also immersed in classical studies, translating Virgil's
Aeneid
and writing notes on the Greek tragedies of Euripides and Aeschylus.
¹³
Anne, too, undoubtedly pursued her lessons at home.

Branwell, as usual, had several ventures on hand at once. While still continuing his story about the unfortunate Henry Hastings and the vicious circle of debauchees, led by George Ellen, into which he had fallen, Branwell had also embarked on a new project, a life of Warner Howard Warner whom he described as one who

has been foremost in all our troubles past and whom I may call the greatest
Creation
of the Storm. All our other \Cheif/ Leaders had been of some account before he alone in our eyes has been born in it and lived in it and gloriously survived it.
¹⁴

As in his earlier ‘Life of Alexander Percy', Branwell gave Warner a distinguished pedigree which set him firmly in his own locality. The family lived near Pendle Hill, the famous haunt of witches which lay just across the moors from Haworth. To the founder of the line in the seventeenth century he gave the resonant name Haworth Currer Warner, which may have been the source of Charlotte's last and most famous pseudonym, Currer Bell.
¹⁵
The family emigrated to Africa in 1780, where General Warner conquered the province of Angria from the Ashantee, Warner Howard Warner being his great-grandchild. Though the story was abandoned as Branwell's circumstances changed, it is interesting to see that a scenario similar to
Lowood School was envisaged. The six-year-old Warner, a sickly child, was to be sent to Dr Moray's Hawkscliffe Academy, despite the fact that his mother opposed the plan, ‘pointing out the probable results from her Sons Unbending spirit and want of power to assert its rights'.
¹⁶

Once she had recovered her equilibrium, Charlotte added her contribution to the literary activity, writing two long stories in a month. The first, beginning with the now almost obligatory skit on a Methodist service in an Ebenezer chapel, was again a series of loosely connected scenes and kaleidoscopic events featuring Charles Townshend, Charlotte's favourite narrator, and William Percy, estranged son of Northangerland, who plays an increasingly important role in the juvenilia. She introduced a new heroine, who foreshadows the predatory and beautiful Blanche Ingram of
Jane Eyre
. Jane Moore is a dazzling beauty, daughter of an Angrian lawyer, who has ambitions to marry a nobleman and, having set her sights on Lord Hartford, proceeds to court him with ruthless ability. Another interesting episode, irrelevant to the story, is a description of Viscount Macara Lofty, who is discovered recovering from an opium-induced stupor. His ecstatic smiles grow less frequent and his ‘almost sensual look of intense gratification & absorption gave place to an air of fatigue'. With throbbing head and shaking hands, he defends his use of opium to the disapproving Townshend:

I was in a state of mind which I will not mock you by endeavouring to describe – but the gloom the despair became unendurable – dread forebodings rushed upon me – whose power I could not withstand – I felt myself on the brink of some hideous disaster & a vague influence ever & anon pushed me over – till clinging wildly to life & reason – I almost lost consciousness in the faintness of mortal terror. Now Townshend – so suffering – how far did I err – when I had recource, to the sovereign specific which a simple narcotic drug offered me?
¹⁷

Though Charlotte later denied that she had ever taken opium,
¹⁸
the circumstances in which Lofty resorted to the drug were very similar to her own experiences at Dewsbury Moor.

Having finished this story on 28 June, Charlotte promptly began another which, in a method totally new to her but which would be used by all the sisters in their published novels, told the story through the medium of letters. Curiously, the subject she chose this time was Augusta di Segovia, Alexander Percy's first wife, whom she wilfully transformed into his mistress. Perhaps because Branwell had already covered the ground so well in his first
volume of ‘The Life of Alexander Percy', Charlotte could make no headway. At the beginning of her eighth chapter she admitted:

One cannot live always in solitude. One cannot continually keep one's feelings wound up to the pitch of romance and reverie. I began this work with the intention of writing something high and pathetic.

She had intended to describe the deathbed of Augusta, poisoned by Robert King, alias Sdeath, and dying alone in agony.

But reader, why should I pursue this subject? All this has been told you before in far higher language than I can use! Revenons à nos moutons! Let it suffice to say that I found this pitch far too high for me. I could not keep it up. I was forced to descend a peg … I grew weary of heroics and longed for some chat with men of common clay
¹⁹

Far from being ‘men of common clay', the conversationalists were Sir William Percy, Lord Hartford and the inevitable Zamorna, and their ‘chat' turned on Percy's appointment to delicate secret diplomatic negotiations in Paris. Charlotte thus fell back on developing the story she had begun in her previous work.

While Charlotte tried to forget Dewsbury Moor by burying herself in her writing, Branwell was preparing to embark on his chosen profession. Any plans to go to the Royal Academy or on a continental tour had now been dropped completely: more surprisingly, the idea of any sort of artistic career had also been ruled out. On 23 February 1838 Patrick had written to John Driver, a merchant and banker in Liverpool:

You are aware, that I have been looking out, during some time, in order to procure a respectable situation, for my Son Branwell. As yet, however, I have not succeeded, according to my wishes, or his. I once thought that he might get into the mercantile line – but there seem to be many and great difficulties in reference to this. I then, turned my attention to a University Education, but this would require great expense, and four or five years from hence, ere he could, in a pecuniary way, do Any thing for himself. These, are serious, and important considerations, which demand great precaution. I am now, of opinion, that it might be, the most prudent of all plans, under all the circumstances of the case, to endeavour to procure for him, a Situation, as Clerk, in a Bank. This would
be respectable, and in time, should he conduct himself well, sufficiently lucrative, and might ultimately lead, to something more desirable. I have made no attempt – either in Halifax, Bradford, or Leeds, since, I think it would be to his advantage to go farther from home, And to see a little more of the World. London, Liverpool, or Manchester, would Answer better, on many accounts, and would open a wider field, for talent, and suitable connexions. On these grounds, I have taken the liberty of applying to You, as the most likely of any Gentleman, I know – requesting, that you would be so good, as to do what you can, Amongst your Friends, at home, and abroad in order to procure an opening for him, as Clerk in some Respectable Bank. I know not what the usual terms are, on which a Young man enters upon such a line of life, but I have heard, that they are comparatively easy, as far as money matters are concerned.
²⁰

Whether no clerkship was available or the cost of providing sureties proved prohibitive, this plan too came to nothing. So it was really as a last resort, rather than the culmination of his dreams, that Branwell returned to the idea of earning his living as an artist. The Reverend William Morgan proved more helpful than Mr Driver and it was under his patronage that Branwell now set up as a professional portrait painter in a studio in Bradford.