Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (592 page)

CHAPTER X: MARGARET WOOLER

The kindly, placid woman who will ever be remembered as Charlotte Brontë’s schoolmistress, had, it may be safely said, no history.  She was a good-hearted woman, who did her work and went to her rest with no possible claim to a place in biography, save only that she assisted in the education of two great women.  For that reason her brief story is worth setting forth here.

‘I am afraid we cannot give you very much information about our aunt, Miss Wooler,’ writes one of her kindred.  ‘She was the eldest of a large family, born June 10th, 1792.  She was extremely intelligent and highly educated, and throughout her long life, which lasted till within a week of completing her ninety-third year, she took the greatest interest in religious, political, and every charitable work, being a life governor to many institutions.  Part of her early life was spent in the Isle of Wight with relations, where she was very intimate with the Sewell family, one of whom was the author of
Amy Herbert
.  By her own family, she was ever looked up to with the greatest respect, being always called “Sister” by her brothers and sisters all her life.  After she retired from her school at Roe Head, and afterwards Dewsbury Moor, she used sometimes to make her home for months together with my father and mother at Heckmondwike Vicarage; then she would go away for a few months to the sea-side, either alone or with one of her sisters.  The last ten or twelve years of her life were spent at Gomersall, along with two of her sisters and a niece.  The three sisters all
 
died within a year, the youngest going first and the eldest last.  They are buried in Birstall Churchyard, close to my parents and sister.

‘Miss Brontë was her pupil when at Roe Head; the late Miss Taylor and Miss E. Nussey were also her pupils at the same time.  Afterwards Miss Brontë stayed on as governess.  My father prepared Miss Brontë for confirmation when he was curate-in-charge at Mirfield Parish Church.  When Miss Brontë was married, Miss Wooler was one of the guests.  Mr. Brontë, not feeling well enough to go to Church that morning, my aunt gave her away, as she had no other relative there to do it.

‘Miss Wooler kept up a warm friendship with her former pupil, up to the time of her death.

‘My aunt was a most loyal subject, and devotedly attached to the Church.  She made a point of reading the Bible steadily through every year, and a chapter out of her Italian Testament each day, for she used to say “she never liked to lose anything she had learnt.”  It was always a pleasure, too, if she met with any one who could converse with her in French.

‘I fear these few items will not be of much use, but it is difficult to record anything of one who led such a quiet and retiring, but useful life.’

‘My recollections of Miss Wooler,’ writes Miss Nussey, ‘are, that she was short and stout, but graceful in her movements, very fluent in conversation and with a very sweet voice.  She had Charlotte and myself to stay with her sometimes after we left school.  We had delightful sitting-up times with her when the pupils had gone to bed.  She would treat us so confidentially, relating her six years’ residence in the Isle of Wight with an uncle and aunt — Dr. More and his wife.  Dr. More was on the military staff, and the society of the island had claims upon him.  Mrs. More was a fine woman and very benevolent.  Personally, Miss Wooler was like a lady abbess.  She wore white, well-fitting dresses embroidered.  Her long hair plaited, formed a coronet, and long large ringlets fell from her head to shoulders.  She was not pretty or handsome, but her quiet dignity made her
 
presence imposing.  She was nobly scrupulous and conscientious — a woman of the greatest self-denial.  Her income was small.  She lived on half of it, and gave the remainder to charitable objects.’

It is clear that Charlotte was very fond of her schoolmistress, although they had one serious difference during the brief period of her stay at Dewsbury Moor with Anne.  Anne was home-sick and ill, and Miss Wooler, with her own robust constitution, found it difficult to understand Anne’s illness.  Charlotte, in arms for her sister, spoke out with vehemence, and both the sisters went home soon afterwards.
 
  Here are a bundle of letters addressed to Miss Wooler.

TO MISS WOOLER

‘Haworth,
August
28
th
, 1848.

‘My dear Miss Wooler, — Since you wish to hear from me while you are from home, I will write without further delay.  It often happens that when we linger at first in answering a friend’s letter, obstacles occur to retard us to an inexcusably late period.

‘In my last I forgot to answer a question you asked me, and was sorry afterwards for the omission; I will begin, therefore, by replying to it, though I fear what I can give will now come a little late.  You said Mrs. Chapham had some thoughts of sending her daughter to school, and wished to know whether the Clergy Daughters’ School at Casterton was an eligible place.

‘My personal knowledge of that institution is very much out of date, being derived from the experience of twenty years ago; the establishment was at that time in its infancy, and a sad rickety infancy it was.  Typhus fever decimated the school periodically, and consumption and scrofula in every variety of form, which bad air and water, and bad, insufficient diet can generate, preyed on the ill-fated pupils.  It would not then have been a fit place for any of Mrs. Chapham’s children.  But, I understand, it is very much altered for the better since those
 
days.  The school is removed from Cowan Bridge (a situation as unhealthy as it was picturesque — low, damp, beautiful with wood and water) to Casterton; the accommodation, the diet, the discipline, the system of tuition, all are, I believe, entirely altered and greatly improved.  I was told that such pupils as behaved well and remained at school till their educations were finished were provided with situations as governesses if they wish to adopt that vocation, and that much care was exercised in the selection; it was added they were also furnished with an excellent wardrobe on quitting Casterton.

‘If I have the opportunity of reading
The Life of Dr. Arnold
, I shall not fail to profit thereby; your recommendation makes me desirous to see it.  Do you remember once speaking with approbation of a book called
Mrs. Leicester’s School
, which you said you had met with, and you wondered by whom it was written?  I was reading the other day a lately published collection of the
Letters of Charles Lamb
, edited by Serjeant Talfourd, where I found it mentioned that
Mrs. Leicester’s School
was the first production of Lamb and his sister.  These letters are themselves singularly interesting; they have hitherto been suppressed in all previous collections of Lamb’s works and relics, on account of the frequent allusions they contain to the unhappy malady of Miss Lamb, and a frightful incident which darkened her earlier years.  She was, it appears, a woman of the sweetest disposition, and, in her normal state, of the highest and clearest intellect, but afflicted with periodical insanity which came on once a year, or oftener.  To her parents she was a most tender and dutiful daughter, nursing them in their old age, when one was physically and the other mentally infirm, with unremitting care, and at the same time toiling to add something by needlework to the slender resources of the family.  A succession of laborious days and sleepless nights brought on a frenzy fit, in which she had the miserable misfortune to kill her own mother.  She was afterwards placed in a madhouse, where she would have been detained for life, had not her brother Charles promised to devote himself to her and take her under his care — and for her sake renounce a project
 
of marriage he then entertained.  An instance of abnegation of self scarcely, I think, to be paralleled in the annals of the “coarser sex.”  They passed their subsequent lives together — models of fraternal affection, and would have been very happy but for the dread visitation to which Mary Lamb continued liable all her life.  I thought it both a sad and edifying history.  Your account of your little niece’s naïve delight in beholding the morning sea for the first time amused and pleased me; it proves she has some sensations — a refreshing circumstance in a day and generation when the natural phenomenon of children wholly destitute of all pretension to the same is by no means an unusual occurrence.

‘I have written a long letter as you requested me, but I fear you will not find it very amusing.  With love to your little companion, — Believe me, my dear Miss Wooler, yours affectionately and respectfully,

‘C. Brontë.

‘Papa, I am most thankful to say, continues in very good health, considering his age.  My sisters likewise are pretty well.’

TO MISS WOOLER

‘Haworth,
March
31
st
, 1848.

‘My dear Miss Wooler, — I had been wishing to hear from you for some time before I received your last.  There has been so much sickness during the last winter, and the influenza especially has been so severe and so generally prevalent, that the sight of suffering around us has frequently suggested fears for absent friends.  Ellen Nussey told me, indeed, that neither you nor Miss C. Wooler had escaped the influenza, but, since your letter contains no allusion to your own health or hers, I trust you are completely recovered.  I am most thankful to say that papa has hitherto been exempted from any attack.  My sister and myself have each had a visit from it, but Anne is the only one with whom it stayed long or did much mischief; in her case it was attended with distressing cough and fever; but she is now better, though it has left her chest weak.

‘I remember well wishing my lot had been cast in the troubled times of the late war, and seeing in its exciting
 
incidents a kind of stimulating charm which it made my pulse beat fast only to think of — I remember even, I think, being a little impatient that you would not fully sympathise with my feelings on this subject, that you heard my aspirations and speculations very tranquilly, and by no means seemed to think the flaming sword could be any pleasant addition to the joys of paradise.  I have now outlived youth; and, though I dare not say that I have outlived all its illusions, that the romance is quite gone from life, the veil fallen from truth, and that I see both in naked reality, yet, certainly, many things are not to me what they were ten years ago; and amongst the rest, “the pomp and circumstance of war” have quite lost in my eyes their factitious glitter.  I have still no doubt that the shock of moral earthquakes wakens a vivid sense of life both in nations and individuals; that the fear of dangers on a broad national scale diverts men’s minds momentarily from brooding over small private perils, and, for the time, gives them something like largeness of views; but, as little doubt have I that convulsive revolutions put back the world in all that is good, check civilisation, bring the dregs of society to its surface — in short, it appears to me that insurrections and battles are the acute diseases of nations, and that their tendency is to exhaust by their violence the vital energies of the countries where they occur.  That England may be spared the spasms, cramps, and frenzy-fits now contorting the Continent and threatening Ireland, I earnestly pray!

‘With the French and Irish I have no sympathy.  With the Germans and Italians I think the case is different — as different as the love of freedom is from the lust of license.’

TO MISS WOOLER

‘Haworth,
September
27
th
, 1850.

‘My dear Miss Wooler, — When I tell you that I have already been to the Lakes this season, and that it is scarcely more than a month since I returned, you will understand that it is no longer within my power to accept your kind invitation.

 
‘I wish I could have gone to you.  I wish your invitation had come first; to speak the truth, it would have suited me better than the one by which I profited.  It would have been pleasant, soothing, in many ways beneficial, to have spent two weeks with you in your cottage-lodgings.  But these reflections are vain.  I have already had my excursion, and there is an end of it.  Sir J. K. Shuttleworth is residing near Windermere, at a house called “The Briary,” and it was there I was staying for a little while in August.  He very kindly showed me the scenery —
as it can be seen from a carriage
— and I discerned that the “Lake Country” is a glorious region, of which I had only seen the similitude in dream — waking or sleeping.  But, my dear Miss Wooler, I only half enjoyed it, because I was only half at my ease.  Decidedly I find it does not agree with me to prosecute the search of the picturesque in a carriage; a waggon, a spring-cart, even a post-chaise might do, but the carriage upsets everything.  I longed to slip out unseen, and to run away by myself in amongst the hills and dales.  Erratic and vagrant instincts tormented me, and these I was obliged to control, or rather, suppress, for fear of growing in any degree enthusiastic, and thus drawing attention to the “lioness,” the authoress, the artist.  Sir J. K. Shuttleworth is a man of ability and intellect, but not a man in whose presence one willingly unbends.