Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (454 page)

To feel the full force of this last sentence — to show how steady and vivid was the impression which Miss Brontë made on those fitted to appreciate her — I must mention that the writer of this letter, dated January 18th, 1856, in which she thus speaks of constantly referring to Charlotte’s opinion has never seen her for eleven years, nearly all of which have been passed among strange scenes, in a new continent, at the antipodes.

“We used to be furious politicians, as one could hardly help being in 1832.  She knew the names of the two ministries; the one that resigned, and the one that succeeded and passed the Reform Bill.  She worshipped the Duke of Wellington, but said that Sir Robert Peel was not to be trusted; he did not act from principle like the rest, but from expediency.  I, being of the furious radical party, told her ‘how could any of them trust one another; they were all of them rascals!’  Then she would launch out into praises of the Duke of Wellington, referring to his actions; which I could not contradict, as I knew nothing about him.  She said she had taken interest in politics ever since she was five years old.  She did not get her opinions from her father — that is, not directly — but from the papers, &c., he preferred.”

In illustration of the truth of this, I may give an extract from a letter to her brother, written from Roe Head, May 17th, 1832: — “Lately I had begun to think that I had lost all the interest which I used formerly to take in politics; but the extreme pleasure I felt at the news of the Reform Bill’s being thrown out by the House of Lords, and of the expulsion, or resignation of Earl Grey, &c., convinced me that I have not as yet lost all my penchant for politics.  I am extremely glad that aunt has consented to take in ‘Fraser’s Magazine;’ for, though I know from your description of its general contents it will be rather uninteresting when compared with ‘Blackwood,’ still it will be better than remaining the whole year without being able to obtain a sight of any periodical whatever; and such would assuredly be our case, as, in the little wild moorland village where we reside, there would be no possibility of borrowing a work of that description from a circulating library.  I hope with you that the present delightful weather may contribute to the perfect restoration of our dear papa’s health; and that it may give aunt pleasant reminiscences of the salubrious climate of her native place,” &c.

To return to “Mary’s” letter.

“She used to speak of her two elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who died at Cowan Bridge.  I used to believe them to have been wonders of talent and kindness.  She told me, early one morning, that she had just been dreaming; she had been told that she was wanted in the drawing-room, and it was Maria and Elizabeth.  I was eager for her to go on, and when she said there was no more, I said, ‘but go on! 
Make it out
!  I know you can.’  She said she would not; she wished she had not dreamed, for it did not go on nicely, they were changed; they had forgotten what they used to care for.  They were very fashionably dressed, and began criticising the room, &c.

“This habit of ‘making out’ interests for themselves that most children get who have none in actual life, was very strong in her.  The whole family used to ‘make out’ histories, and invent characters and events.  I told her sometimes they were like growing potatoes in a cellar.  She said, sadly, ‘Yes!  I know we are!’

“Some one at school said she ‘was always talking about clever people; Johnson, Sheridan, &c.’  She said, ‘Now you don’t know the meaning of
clever
, Sheridan might be clever; yes, Sheridan was clever, — scamps often are; but Johnson hadn’t a spark of cleverality in him.’  No one appreciated the opinion; they made some trivial remark about ‘
cleverality
,’ and she said no more.

“This is the epitome of her life.  At our house she had just as little chance of a patient hearing, for though not school-girlish, we were more intolerant.  We had a rage for practicality, and laughed all poetry to scorn.  Neither she nor we had any idea but that our opinions were the opinions of all the
sensible
people in the world, and we used to astonish each other at every sentence . . . Charlotte, at school, had no plan of life beyond what circumstances made for her.  She knew that she must provide for herself, and chose her trade; at least chose to begin it once.  Her idea of self-improvement ruled her even at school.  It was to cultivate her tastes.  She always said there was enough of hard practicality and
useful
knowledge forced on us by necessity, and that the thing most needed was to soften and refine our minds.  She picked up every scrap of information concerning painting, sculpture, poetry, music, &c., as if it were gold.”

What I have heard of her school days from other sources, confirms the accuracy of the details in this remarkable letter.  She was an indefatigable student: constantly reading and learning; with a strong conviction of the necessity and value of education, very unusual in a girl of fifteen.  She never lost a moment of time, and seemed almost to grudge the necessary leisure for relaxation and play-hours, which might be partly accounted for by the awkwardness in all games occasioned by her shortness of sight.  Yet, in spite of these unsociable habits, she was a great favourite with her school-fellows.  She was always ready to try and do what they wished, though not sorry when they called her awkward, and left her out of their sports.  Then, at night, she was an invaluable story-teller, frightening them almost out of their wits as they lay in bed.  On one occasion the effect was such that she was led to scream out aloud, and Miss W — -, coming up stairs, found that one of the listeners had been seized with violent palpitations, in consequence of the excitement produced by Charlotte’s story.

Her indefatigable craving for knowledge tempted Miss W — - on into setting her longer and longer tasks of reading for examination; and towards the end of the year and a half that she remained as a pupil at Roe Head, she received her first bad mark for an imperfect lesson.  She had had a great quantity of Blair’s “Lectures on Belles Lettres” to read; and she could not answer some of the questions upon it; Charlotte Brontë had a bad mark.  Miss W — - was sorry, and regretted that she had set Charlotte so long a task.  Charlotte cried bitterly.  But her school-fellows were more than sorry — they were indignant.  They declared that the infliction of ever so slight a punishment on Charlotte Brontë was unjust — for who had tried to do her duty like her? — and testified their feeling in a variety of ways, until Miss W — -, who was in reality only too willing to pass over her good pupil’s first fault, withdrew the bad mark; and the girls all returned to their allegiance except “Mary,” who took her own way during the week or two that remained of the half-year, choosing to consider that Miss W — -, in giving Charlotte Brontë so long a task, had forfeited her claim to obedience of the school regulations.

The number of pupils was so small that the attendance to certain subjects at particular hours, common in larger schools, was not rigidly enforced.  When the girls were ready with their lessons, they came to Miss W — - to say them.  She had a remarkable knack of making them feel interested in whatever they had to learn.  They set to their studies, not as to tasks or duties to be got through, but with a healthy desire and thirst for knowledge, of which she had managed to make them perceive the relishing savour.  They did not leave off reading and learning as soon as the compulsory pressure of school was taken away.  They had been taught to think, to analyse, to reject, to appreciate.  Charlotte Brontë was happy in the choice made for her of the second school to which she was sent.  There was a robust freedom in the out-of-doors life of her companions.  They played at merry games in the fields round the house: on Saturday half-holidays they went long scrambling walks down mysterious shady lanes, then climbing the uplands, and thus gaining extensive views over the country, about which so much had to be told, both of its past and present history.

Miss W — - must have had in great perfection the French art, “conter,” to judge from her pupil’s recollections of the tales she related during these long walks, of this old house, or that new mill, and of the states of society consequent on the changes involved by the suggestive dates of either building.  She remembered the times when watchers or wakeners in the night heard the distant word of command, and the measured tramp of thousands of sad desperate men receiving a surreptitious military training, in preparation for some great day which they saw in their visions, when right should struggle with might and come off victorious: when the people of England, represented by the workers of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Nottinghamshire, should make their voice heard in a terrible slogan, since their true and pitiful complaints could find no hearing in parliament.  We forget, now-a-days, so rapid have been the changes for the better, how cruel was the condition of numbers of labourers at the close of the great Peninsular war.  The half-ludicrous nature of some of their grievances has lingered on in tradition; the real intensity of their sufferings has become forgotten.  They were maddened and desperate; and the country, in the opinion of many, seemed to be on the verge of a precipice, from which it was only saved by the prompt and resolute decision of a few in authority.  Miss W — - spoke of those times; of the mysterious nightly drillings; of thousands on lonely moors; of the muttered threats of individuals too closely pressed upon by necessity to be prudent; of the overt acts, in which the burning of Cartwright’s mill took a prominent place; and these things sank deep into the mind of one, at least, among her hearers.

Mr. Cartwright was the owner of a factory called Rawfolds, in Liversedge, not beyond the distance of a walk from Roe Head.  He had dared to employ machinery for the dressing of woollen cloth, which was an unpopular measure in 1812, when many other circumstances conspired to make the condition of the mill-hands unbearable from the pressure of starvation and misery.  Mr. Cartwright was a very remarkable man, having, as I have been told, some foreign blood in him, the traces of which were very apparent in his tall figure, dark eyes and complexion, and singular, though gentlemanly bearing.  At any rate he had been much abroad, and spoke French well, of itself a suspicious circumstance to the bigoted nationality of those days.  Altogether he was an unpopular man, even before he took the last step of employing shears, instead of hands, to dress his wool.  He was quite aware of his unpopularity, and of the probable consequences.  He had his mill prepared for an assault.  He took up his lodgings in it; and the doors were strongly barricaded at night.  On every step of the stairs there was placed a roller, spiked with barbed points all round, so as to impede the ascent of the rioters, if they succeeded in forcing the doors.

On the night of Saturday the 11th of April, 1812, the assault was made.  Some hundreds of starving cloth-dressers assembled in the very field near Kirklees that sloped down from the house which Miss W — - afterwards inhabited, and were armed by their leaders with pistols, hatchets, and bludgeons, many of which had been extorted by the nightly bands that prowled about the country, from such inhabitants of lonely houses as had provided themselves with these means of self-defence.  The silent sullen multitude marched in the dead of that spring-night to Rawfolds, and giving tongue with a great shout, roused Mr. Cartwright up to the knowledge that the long-expected attack was come.  He was within walls, it is true; but against the fury of hundreds he had only four of his own workmen and five soldiers to assist him.  These ten men, however, managed to keep up such a vigorous and well-directed fire of musketry that they defeated all the desperate attempts of the multitude outside to break down the doors, and force a way into the mill; and, after a conflict of twenty minutes, during which two of the assailants were killed and several wounded, they withdrew in confusion, leaving Mr. Cartwright master of the field, but so dizzy and exhausted, now the peril was past, that he forgot the nature of his defences, and injured his leg rather seriously by one of the spiked rollers, in attempting to go up his own staircase.  His dwelling was near the factory.  Some of the rioters vowed that, if he did not give in, they would leave this, and go to his house, and murder his wife and children.  This was a terrible threat, for he had been obliged to leave his family with only one or two soldiers to defend them.  Mrs. Cartwright knew what they had threatened; and on that dreadful night, hearing, as she thought, steps approaching, she snatched up her two infant children, and put them in a basket up the great chimney, common in old-fashioned Yorkshire houses.  One of the two children who had been thus stowed away used to point out with pride, after she had grown up to woman’s estate, the marks of musket shot, and the traces of gunpowder on the walls of her father’s mill.  He was the first that had offered any resistance to the progress of the “Luddites,” who had become by this time so numerous as almost to assume the character of an insurrectionary army.  Mr. Cartwright’s conduct was so much admired by the neighbouring mill-owners that they entered into a subscription for his benefit which amounted in the end to 3,000
l
.

Not much more than a fortnight after this attack on Rawfolds, another manufacturer who employed the obnoxious machinery was shot down in broad daylight, as he was passing over Crossland Moor, which was skirted by a small plantation in which the murderers lay hidden.  The readers of “Shirley” will recognise these circumstances, which were related to Miss Brontë years after they occurred, but on the very spots where they took place, and by persons who remembered full well those terrible times of insecurity to life and property on the one hand, and of bitter starvation and blind ignorant despair on the other.