The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (40 page)

“Confound it, woman! Can’t you understand? You are my last surviving daughter. You are all I have!” Tears started in his eyes, and his voice faltered. “All your life you have been subject to ill health. You are, I fear, not strong enough to marry.”

I felt my cheeks redden; his unspoken meaning was clear. “Women marry and have children every day, papa. I may surprise you. I am stronger than you think.”

He shook his head, and wiped his eyes. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you must marry, choose some one higher up—a man more accomplished and successful, a man from a great family—a man worthy of your standing as one of the most celebrated women authors of the day. A man like Mr. George Smith!”

“Mr. Smith is engaged to be married, papa.”

“What? Is he?”

“I just learned of it a few days past. Mr. Smith has fallen in love with a young society beauty, just as I always predicted.”

“Oh dear. How disappointing. I had high hopes for you in that quarter.”

“I never did—and you must not delude yourself on that point any longer, papa. Men of Mr. Smith’s ilk would never be interested in a woman like me. I have never been pretty, and now I am old. How many more chances will I have of matrimony?
Mr. Nicholls may be poor, but he loves me! Moreover, he loves me for who I am, not for the ‘celebrated author’ that I have become. Do you think there are many men who would have served eight long years waiting for me?”

“Mr. Nicholls is nothing but a curate! Worse yet,
he comes from nothing
—a penniless family of illiterate, Irish farmers! Can you truly imagine yourself the wife of such a man? He crosses the Irish Sea every autumn to see
his people,
as he calls them, and you can bet he’ll expect you to accompany him. I know what
his people
are like, my girl! I came from such a family myself, and I have not returned to Ireland once since I left it, for good reason! The poor Irish are nothing like the English. They lack manners and good breeding; they are lazy, slipshod, and negligent in matters of housekeeping and hygiene; their daily habits and customs would mystify and appall you; and as to intellectual interests and pursuits, they are perfectly indifferent. Is that the kind of family you want for yourself?”

My cheeks again grew warm. Diary, I am mortified to admit it, but this consideration
did
bother me a little. I was not worldly enough to know if papa’s assertions were true or merely a reflection of his own experience, but I had heard such assertions about Irish negligence from others. When I had, as a young woman, allowed myself to dream of marriage, I had imagined myself being welcomed into a new, extended family who were not only loving, but well-read, cultured, and refined: intelligent people whose minds were similar to my own, and who lived in conditions at least equal to my own, however modest. I knew, though, that this was only senseless vanity and pride, and of no true importance; and I shoved the thought aside.

“One cannot and should not judge a man by his family,” said I vehemently. “Mr. Nicholls has none of the faults you just described—if faults they be—and that is all that matters to me.”

“I do not understand it. How can you even
contemplate
marrying a poor curate?”

“I think I must marry a curate, papa,
if
I marry at all; not
merely a curate, but
your
curate—and if I
do
choose him, he must live in this house with us, for I will not leave you.”

Papa stood up, his eyes flashing with fury. “Never. I will never have another man in this house. Do you understand me?
Never!
” With that, he stalked from the room.

For a full week, papa did not speak a word to me. The air in the house was so thick with tension, that at times I thought I could not breathe. One morning, as I sat taking breakfast alone, I heard Tabby hobble into papa’s study and berate him loudly.

“This idiocy has like t’ gone on long enought,” cried the old woman. “Ye pass our poor Miss i’ th’ hall wi’out so mich as a kind look or word; ye stalk abaat th’ house like a mad tyrant! What gives ye th’ right, sir, t’ tell a woman nearly forty year o’ age, what she can an’ cannae do? Do ye wish t’ kill yer only daughter, sir? This may well be her ony chance for true happiness. Let her take it, ye foolish owd man!”

That afternoon, papa gave his begrudging permission for me to “see that gentleman,” with no promises beyond that. It was all I needed. That same day I wrote to Mr. Nicholls, informing him of my intention: that I should like to renew our acquaintance in person, with the idea of reconsidering his proposal, to discover if we could come to a better understanding.

Mr. Nicholls wrote back like lightning, and fixed our meeting for the earliest opportunity that he could get away. He came in the third week of January for a ten-day visit, again staying with the Grants at Oxenhope. This time, he was able to present himself openly and above-board at the parsonage. On the day Mr. Nicholls arrived, however, to my great embarrassment, papa received him in such an unpleasant and hostile manner, that we were obliged to leave the house at once to seek privacy and peace of mind.

I donned my warmest cloak, hat, gloves, muff, and boots, and the two of us set off on a walk. The day was very cold with an iron sky, but thankfully there was little wind. Heavy snowfalls in
the new year had transformed the surrounding hills and dales into a billowy white ocean, filling the depressions in the moors to meet the rises in a level, and disguising familiar landmarks. Many an inexperienced visitor who dared to cross those frozen hill backs had been known to lose their way, or to sink up to their necks in the snow. We embarked instead on a safer route: the well-tramped path across the snowy fields between Haworth and Oxenhope.

As Mr. Nicholls and I ambled along, our cheeks rosy and our breath forming clouds in the air, our feet made soft crunching sounds against the densely-packed snow. The path was just wide enough for two, requiring us to walk in close proximity, side by side; in our exertion we often bumped up against each other, prompting him to say “Excuse me” so many times in the first ten minutes that I told him to please refrain from further apology: he might bump into me as often as he liked.

Despite this somewhat awkward beginning, I noticed that Mr. Nicholls did not seem quite as nervous at this meeting as he had been the previous September; in fact, when I glanced up at him, I caught him gazing down at me with affectionate eyes and a smile upon his face.

I smiled in return and said, “Mr. Nicholls, now that we—at last—have this opportunity to speak alone and in person, I wish to begin by thanking you for your unwavering constancy over the past year, in the face of every obstacle. Furthermore, I wish to apologise for my father’s unconscionable behaviour during that time, and for my own prolonged confusion and indecision.”

“I appreciate that, Miss Brontë but I’ve always felt your father was perfectly justified in his objections to a union between you and myself, and I understand your own reluctance.”

I looked up at him again, expecting to detect some trace of sarcasm in his countenance, but there was none at all: his expression and tone conveyed the utmost in sincerity and humility. I shook my head in wonder and renewed respect. “Had I been treated by my parson as you were, Mr. Nicholls, during
your last six months in Haworth, I do not believe that I could be as gracious or forgiving.”

“How else should I be? You’re the world to your father, and he to you. He had higher aims for you than to marry his curate. I cannot blame you for feeling similarly, and for not wishing to disappoint him.”

“His pride and ambition for me must be exorcised, sir; there is no need or place for it. You have proved your worth with years of selfless commitment to this community. Indeed, in the months since your departure, the negligence and incompetence of your successor has reminded every one in Haworth of what they lost in saying good-bye to you.”

He frowned in surprise. “What has Mr. de Renzy done—or not done—that’s so appalling?”

“Oh, the list of his deficiencies is far too long to bear repeating, sir. Rest assured that no permanent damage has been done, however; and perhaps, when papa overcomes his prejudices and sees reason, these discrepancies will even do some good.” Our eyes met; we shared a laugh. As we strolled on in the silence of early afternoon, I took a deep breath of the wintry air and added: “Mr. Nicholls: I believe I mentioned in my letter that I hoped, on this visit, we might become better acquainted.”

“You did say that, Miss Brontë although in truth, I’m at a loss as to what you meant by it. We’ve been acquainted now for nearly nine years already.”

“True; but it occurs to me that—as a result of living here, where I grew up, and your many conversations with my father—you know a great deal more about me, than I know about you.”

“Is that so?”

“It is. I know almost nothing about your life in Ireland before you came to Haworth, Mr. Nicholls. Will you enlighten me? Will you tell me something about yourself?”

“If you wish. How far back would you like me to go?”

“I think birth would be a good place to start.”

He laughed. “All right then: my birth. I was born thirty-six
years ago, on the 6th of January, on a day so cold, it’s said that my father chipped a tooth on his soup, the dogs were wearing cats, and when the midwife announced, ‘it’s a boy,’ her words froze up solid right in the air.”

Now it was my turn to laugh.

“Like all my brothers and sisters before me, I was born at Tully Farm in Killead, in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. My father William came from Scotland originally; he was a hardscrabble farmer, living off the land. My mother Margaret came from nearby Glenavy. She was also of Scottish descent, but her family were members of the Established church.”

“Ah! I have long thought I detected a slight hint of Scottish in your speech.”

“Have you? And here I thought I’d rid myself of it. Well, my mam was a good woman, but she worked so hard to help keep the farm going, all the while giving birth to ten children one after the other, that she had little time or energy to be affectionate. I was the sixth child in line. Killead wasn’t a bad place; as I recall, all the houses were small but neat and well-kept, with gardens. Although I left that house when I was young, it’ll always be fixed in my memory: one big room with lime-washed walls and a thatched roof, and it stood one and a half storeys high.”

“One and a half storeys? What do you mean?”

“The ground floor was just a large, flagged kitchen. Our sleeping loft was upstairs under the rafters, but we had no stairs. We used notches in the wall to get up there.”

“Notches in the wall? And a one-room house, for twelve people?”

“Yes. We had a stable at one end and a byre
⁶⁶
at the other, with a circular horse-walk at the back for churning butter. ’Twas a hard life, although I didn’t know it at the time. We often had nothing but milk and potatoes to eat for weeks on end, with only the odd piece of meat from the pigs and chickens, but we didn’t starve. I thought it perfectly natural to sleep three or four to a
bed. Sheets were in such short supply, Miss Brontë, that my mam cut them into little strips, and gave us each a scrap to use as a shield between our faces and the coarse woolen blanket.”

“Oh, Mr. Nicholls! I cannot imagine such a thing. Even at the Clergy Daughters’ School, we were not so impoverished as that.”

“I didn’t know I was impoverished. When you are very young, you don’t question what you don’t have. It was just my life. I would’ve been a farmer, no different from my father and my two eldest brothers, with no education other than a few years at the local schoolhouse, had it not been for the grace of God and my Aunt and Uncle Bell.”

“Your Aunt and Uncle Bell?”

“Uncle Bell was my mam’s brother. He was a clergyman and a teacher, and a bit better off than my father. One day when he came to visit, he saw our house bursting at the seams and my parents overwhelmed at having so many mouths to feed. I overheard the grown-ups talking. My father was worried. He said my two eldest brothers were to inherit the farm, and my sisters, he figured, would marry or go into some kind of service; but what was to become of his two younger sons? Uncle Bell—even though he had two small children of his own at the time—offered to take me and my brother Alan back home with him to Banagher, to raise as his own, and my parents agreed.”

I looked at him, shocked. “Just like that—your parents gave you away?”

“They did.” There was a flicker of pain in Mr. Nicholls’s eyes.

“How old were you?”

“Seven. Alan had just turned ten.”

“Oh! That is very young indeed to leave your mother and father!”

“It was—and a heart-rending decision for my parents to make, I’m sure—but a kind and selfless act on the part of my uncle. I’ll never forget the sight of my mother and father sobbing in the doorway of the house as we drove away. I never saw them or my brothers and sisters again.”

“Never? Why not?”

“My parents insisted it would be too hard on all of us; that if Alan and I were to have a fresh start in life with a new family, we must not look back.”

“Oh!” This revelation pained me so much, I could barely speak. My heart went out to Mr. Nicholls; all at once, I felt I understood him better than I ever had. No wonder he kept his emotions so bottled up inside; no wonder, when he did allow himself to feel and commit himself to some one, he formed such a deep and permanent attachment.

“It proved, however, to be the beginning of a new life for me, Miss Brontë. My aunt and uncle took us into their home and their hearts, and treated us as part of their own growing family. Their children—eventually there were nine of them—”

“Nine!”

He nodded, with a sudden smile. “My first cousins became as younger brothers and sisters to Alan and me. Aunt and Uncle Bell were loving and generous, and shared whatever they had. Because my uncle had a school, we got an excellent education into the bargain, and when we’d grown, he managed it so Alan and I could attend Trinity College. He passed on nearly fifteen years ago. I miss him dearly—as does all the family.”