Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (590 page)

‘If I could command sufficient money for a twelve-month, I would go home by way of India and write my travels, which
 
would prepare the way for my novel.  With the benefit of your experience I should perhaps make a better bargain than you.  I am most afraid of my health.  Not that I should die, but perhaps sink into a state of betweenity, neither well nor ill, in which I should observe nothing, and be very miserable besides.  My life here is not disagreeable.  I have a great resource in the piano, and a little employment in teaching.

‘It’s a pity you don’t live in this world, that I might entertain you about the price of meat.  Do you know, I bought six heifers the other day for £23, and now it is turned so cold I expect to hear one-half of them are dead.  One man bought twenty sheep for £8, and they are all dead but one.  Another bought 150 and has 40 left.

‘I have now told you everything I can think of except that the cat’s on the table and that I’m going to borrow a new book to read — no less than an account of all the systems of philosophy of modern Europe.  I have lately met with a wonder, a man who thinks Jane Eyre would have done better to marry Mr. Rivers!  He gives no reason — such people never do.

‘Mary Taylor.’

TO MISS CHARLOTTE BRONTË

‘Wellington, New Zealand.

‘Dear Charlotte, — I have set up shop!  I am delighted with it as a whole — that is, it is as pleasant or as little disagreeable as you can expect an employment to be that you earn your living by.  The best of it is that your labour has some return, and you are not forced to work on hopelessly without result. 
Du reste
, it is very odd.  I keep looking at myself with one eye while I’m using the other, and I sometimes find myself in very queer positions.  Yesterday I went along the shore past the wharfes and several warehouses on a street where I had never been before during all the five years I have been in Wellington.  I opened the door of a long place filled with packages, with passages up the middle, and a row of high windows on one side.  At the far end of the room a man was writing at a desk beneath a window.  I walked all the length of the room very slowly, for
 
what I had come for had completely gone out of my head.  Fortunately the man never heard me until I had recollected it.  Then he got up, and I asked him for some stone-blue, saltpetre, tea, pickles, salt, etc.  He was very civil.  I bought some things and asked for a note of them.  He went to his desk again; I looked at some newspapers lying near.  On the top was a circular from Smith & Elder containing notices of the most important new works.  The first and longest was given to
Shirley
, a book I had seen mentioned in the
Manchester Examiner
as written by Currer Bell.  I blushed all over.  The man got up, folding the note.  I pulled it out of his hand and set off to the door, looking odder than ever, for a partner had come in and was watching.  The clerk said something about sending them, and I said something too — I hope it was not very silly — and took my departure.

‘I have seen some extracts from
Shirley
in which you talk of women working.  And this first duty, this great necessity, you seem to think that some women may indulge in, if they give up marriage, and don’t make themselves too disagreeable to the other sex.  You are a coward and a traitor.  A woman who works is by that alone better than one who does not; and a woman who does not happen to be rich and who
still
earns no money and does not wish to do so, is guilty of a great fault, almost a crime — a dereliction of duty which leads rapidly and almost certainly to all manner of degradation.  It is very wrong of you to
plead
for toleration for workers on the ground of their being in peculiar circumstances, and few in number or singular in disposition.  Work or degradation is the lot of all except the very small number born to wealth.

‘Ellen is with me, or I with her.  I cannot tell how our shop will turn out, but I am as sanguine as ever.  Meantime we certainly amuse ourselves better than if we had nothing to do.  We
like
it, and that’s the truth.  By the
Cornelia
we are going to send our sketches and fern leaves.  You must look at them, and it will need all your eyes to understand them, for they are a mass of confusion.  They are all within two miles of Wellington, and some of them rather like — Ellen’s sketch of
 
me especially.  During the last six months I have seen more “society” than in all the last four years.  Ellen is half the reason of my being invited, and my improved circumstances besides.  There is no one worth mentioning particularly.  The women are all ignorant and narrow, and the men selfish.  They are of a decent, honest kind, and some intelligent and able.  A Mr. Woodward is the only
literary
man we know, and he seems to have fair sense.  This was the clerk I bought the stone-blue of.  We have just got a mechanic’s institute, and weekly lectures delivered there.  It is amusing to see people trying to find out whether or not it is fashionable and proper to patronise it.  Somehow it seems it is.  I think I have told you all this before, which shows I have got to the end of my news.  Your next letter to me ought to bring me good news, more cheerful than the last.  You will somehow get drawn out of your hole and find interests among your fellow-creatures.  Do you know that living among people with whom you have not the slightest interest in common is just like living alone, or worse?  Ellen Nussey is the only one you can talk to, that I know of at least.  Give my love to her and to Miss Wooler, if you have the opportunity.  I am writing this on just such a night as you will likely read it — rain and storm, coming winter, and a glowing fire.  Ours is on the ground, wood, no fender or irons; no matter, we are very comfortable.

‘Pag.’

TO MISS CHARLOTTE BRONTË

‘Wellington, N. Z.,
April
3
rd
, 1850.

‘Dear Charlotte, — About a week since I received your last melancholy letter with the account of Anne’s death and your utter indifference to everything, even to the success of your last book.  Though you do not say this, it is pretty plain to be seen from the style of your letter.  It seems to me hard indeed that you who would succeed, better than any one, in making friends and keeping them, should be condemned to solitude from your poverty.  To no one would money bring more happiness, for no one would use it better than you would.  For me,
 
with my headlong self-indulgent habits, I am perhaps better without it, but I am convinced it would give you great and noble pleasures.  Look out then for success in writing; you ought to care as much for that as you do for going to Heaven.  Though the advantages of being employed appear to you now the best part of the business, you will soon, please God, have other enjoyments from your success.  Railway shares will rise, your books will sell, and you will acquire influence and power; and then most certainly you will find something to use it in which will interest you and make you exert yourself.

‘I have got into a heap of social trickery since Ellen came, never having troubled my head before about the comparative numbers of young ladies and young gentlemen.  To Ellen it is quite new to be of such importance by the mere fact of her femininity.  She thought she was coming wofully down in the world when she came out, and finds herself better received than ever she was in her life before.  And the class are not
in education
inferior, though they are in money.  They are decent well-to-do people: six grocers, one draper, two parsons, two clerks, two lawyers, and three or four nondescripts.  All these but one have families to “take tea with,” and there are a lot more single men to flirt with.  For the last three months we have been out every Sunday sketching.  We seldom succeed in making the slightest resemblance to the thing we sit down to, but it is wonderfully interesting.  Next year we hope to send a lot home.  With all this my novel stands still; it might have done so if I had had nothing to do, for it is not want of time but want of freedom of mind that makes me unable to direct my attention to it.  Meantime it grows in my head, for I never give up the idea.  I have written about a volume I suppose.  Read this letter to Ellen Nussey.

‘Mary Taylor.’

TO MISS CHARLOTTE BRONTË

‘Wellington,
August
13
th
, 1850.

‘Dear Charlotte, — After waiting about six months we have just got
Shirley
.  It was landed from the
Constantinople
on Monday afternoon, just in the thick of our preparations for a
 
“small party” for the next day.  We stopped spreading red blankets over everything (New Zealand way of arranging the room) and opened the box and read all the letters.  Soyer’s
Housewife
and
Shirley
were there all right, but Miss Martineau’s book was not.  In its place was a silly child’s tale called
Edward Orland
.  On Tuesday we stayed up dancing till three or four o’clock, what for I can’t imagine.  However, it was a piece of business done.  On Wednesday I began
Shirley
and continued in a curious confusion of mind till now, principally at the handsome foreigner who was nursed in our house when I was a little girl.  By the way, you’ve put him in the servant’s bedroom.  You make us all talk much as I think we should have done if we’d ventured to speak at all.  What a little lump of perfection you’ve made me!  There is a strange feeling in reading it of hearing us all talking.  I have not seen the matted hall and painted parlour windows so plain these five years.  But my father is not like.  He hates well enough and perhaps loves too, but he is not honest enough.  It was from my father I learnt not to marry for money nor to tolerate any one who did, and he never would advise any one to do so, or fail to speak with contempt of those who did.  Shirley is much more interesting than Jane Eyre, who never interests you at all until she has something to suffer.  All through this last novel there is so much more life and stir that it leaves you far more to remember than the other.  Did you go to London about this too?  What for?  I see by a letter of yours to Mr. Dixon that you
have
been.  I wanted to contradict some of your opinions, now I can’t.  As to when I’m coming home, you may well ask.  I have wished for fifteen years to begin to earn my own living; last April I began to try — it is too soon to say yet with what success.  I am woefully ignorant, terribly wanting in tact, and obstinately lazy, and almost too old to mend.  Luckily there is no other dance for me, so I must work.  Ellen takes to it kindly, it gratifies a deep ardent
wish
of hers as of mine, and she is habitually industrious.  For
her
, ten years younger, our shop will be a blessing.  She may possibly secure an independence, and skill to keep it and use it, before the prime of life
 
is past.  As to my writings, you may as well ask the Fates about that too.  I can give you no information.  I write a page now and then.  I never forget or get strange to what I have written.  When I read it over it looks very interesting.

‘Mary Taylor.’

The Ellen Taylor referred to so frequently was, as I have said, a cousin of Mary’s.  Her early death in New Zealand gives the single letter I have of hers a more pathetic interest.

TO MISS CHARLOTTE BRONTË

‘Wellington, N. Z.

‘My dear Miss Brontë, — I shall tell you everything I can think of, since you said in one of your letters to Pag that you wished me to write to you.  I have been here a year.  It seems a much shorter time, and yet I have thought more and done more than I ever did in my life before.  When we arrived, Henry and I were in such a hurry to leave the ship that we didn’t wait to be fetched, but got into the first boat that came alongside.  When we landed we inquired where Waring lived, but hadn’t walked far before we met him.  I had never seen him before, but he guessed we were the cousins he expected, so caught us and took us along with him.  Mary soon joined us, and we went home together.  At first I thought Mary was not the least altered, but when I had seen her for about a week I thought she looked rather older.  The first night Mary and I sat up till 2 a.m. talking.  Mary and I settled we would do something together, and we talked for a fortnight before we decided whether we would have a school or shop; it ended in favour of the shop.  Waring thought we had better be quiet, and I believe he still thinks we are doing it for amusement; but he never refuses to help us.  He is teaching us book-keeping, and he buys things for us now and then.  Mary gets as fierce as a dragon and goes to all the wholesale stores and looks at things, gets patterns, samples, etc., and asks prices, and then comes home, and we talk it over; and then she goes again and buys what we want.  She says the
 
people are always civil to her.  Our keeping shop astonishes every body here; I believe they think we do it for fun.  Some think we shall make nothing of it, or that we shall get tired; and all laugh at us.  Before I left home I used to be afraid of being laughed at, but now it has very little effect upon me.

‘Mary and I are settled together now: I can’t do without Mary and she couldn’t get on by herself.  I built the house we live in, and we made the plan ourselves, so it suits us.  We take it in turns to serve in the shop, and keep the accounts, and do the housework — I mean, Mary takes the shop for a week and I the kitchen, and then we change.  I think we shall do very well if no more severe earthquakes come, and if we can prevent fire.  When a wooden house takes fire it doesn’t stop; and we have got an oil cask about as high as I am, that would help it.  If some sparks go out at the chimney-top the shingles are in danger.  The last earthquake but one about a fortnight ago threw down two medicine bottles that were standing on the table and made other things jingle, but did no damage.  If we have nothing worse than that I don’t care, but I don’t want the chimney to come down — it would cost £10 to build it up again.  Mary is making me stop because it is nearly 9 p.m. and we are going to Waring’s to supper.  Good-bye. — Yours truly,