Brontës (120 page)

A dreadful darkness closes in

On my bewildered mind

O let me suffer & not sin

Be tortured yet resigned

Through all this world of whelming mist

Still let me look to thee

And give me courage to resist

The Tempter till he flee

Weary I am – O give me strength

And leave me not to faint

Say thou wilt Comfort me at length

And pity my complaint

I've begged to serve thee heart & soul

To sacrifice to thee

No niggard portion but the whole

Of my identity

I hoped amid the brave & strong

My portioned task might lie

To toil amid the labouring throng

With purpose Keen & high

But thou hast fixed another part

And thou hast fixed it well

I said so with my bleeding heart

When first the anguish fell

O thou hast taken my delight

& hope of life away

And bid me watch the painful night

& wait the weary day

The hope & the delight were thine

I bless thee for their loan

I gave thee while I deemed them mine

Too little thanks I own
⁴⁷

It was not simply the thought of death itself that instilled such despair into Anne, but rather the fact that she had achieved so little. Her life, like Branwell's and Emily's, was to be the story of ambition and potential unfulfilled. Three weeks later, having had time to reflect on her fate and come to terms with it, Anne returned to the poem and added a further nine verses. Less desperate in tone, they show Anne's determination to find some value in the suffering which, she knew all too well, she would have to endure.

These weary hours will not be lost

These days of passive misery

These nights of darkness anguish-tost

If I can fix my heart on thee …

That secret labour to sustain

With humble patience every blow

To gather fortitude from Pain

And hope & holiness from Wo

Thus let me serve thee from my heart

Whate'er my written fate

Whether thus early to depart

Or yet, awhile to wait

If thou whouldst bring me back to life

More humbled I should be

More Wise more strengthened for the strife

More apt to lean on thee

Should Death be standing at the gate

Thus should I Keep my vow

But Lord whate'er my future fate

So let me serve thee now
⁴⁸

While Anne kept her innermost thoughts and sufferings to herself, Charlotte could not be so self-contained, especially once Ellen had returned to Brookroyd. ‘In sitting down to write to you', she told Williams,

I feel as if I were doing a wrong and a selfish thing; I believe I ought to discontinue my correspondence with you till times change and the tide of calamity which of late days has set so strongly in against us, takes a turn. But the fact is, sometimes I feel it absolutely necessary to unburden my mind. To papa I must only speak cheeringly, to Anne only encouragingly, to you I may give some hint of the dreary truth.
⁴⁹

That dreary truth was soon told: ‘Anne cannot study now, she can scarcely read; she occupies Emily's chair – she does not get well.' What could not be told so quickly was the anguish Charlotte herself was suffering.

When we lost Emily I thought we had drained the very dregs of our cup of trial but now when I hear Anne cough as Emily coughed, I tremble lest there should be exquisite bitterness yet to taste. However I must not look forwards, nor must I look backwards. Too often I feel like one crossing an abyss on a narrow plank – a glance round might quite unnerve …

All the days of this winter have gone by darkly and heavily like a funeral train; since September sickness has not quitted the house – it is strange – it did not use to be so – but I suspect now all this has been coming on for years: unused any of us to the possession of robust health, we have not noticed the gradual approaches of decay; we did not know its symptoms; the little cough, the small appetite, the tendency to take cold at every variation of atmosphere have been regarded as things of course – I see them in another light now.
⁵⁰

In the circumstances, and given Charlotte's tendency to hypochondria at times of stress or crisis, it is not surprising that she herself now developed the symptoms of consumption. Even though, at MrTeale's recommendation she no longer shared a bed with Anne, Charlotte had pains in her chest and back, her voice was hoarse and her throat sore. She treated herself with pitch plasters, bran tea and applications of hot vinegar and, when Ellen sent a present of cork soles which retained warmth against the cold, stone-flagged
parsonage floors for the genuine invalid, Charlotte commissioned her to buy a pair for herself.
⁵¹

Charlotte was fortunate in having good friends. Ellen Nussey gave practical assistance, not only sending the cork soles but also recommending and purchasing a respirator to ease Anne's breathing; Williams offered moral support, an ever-sympathetic ear and another parcel of carefully chosen books.
⁵²
George Smith suggested that Dr John Forbes, a personal friend who was also editor of the
Medical Review
, physician to the Queen's household and, most importantly, one of the first authorities in England on consumptive cases, should visit Haworth and examine Anne for himself. Charlotte, clutching at straws, ran to her father with this last proposal only to be bitterly disappointed when he rejected it. More realistic than his daughter, he could not see that anything would be achieved by dragging a physician, however eminent, all the way from London when Anne was already in the care of Mr Teale. ‘Notwithstanding his habitual reluctance to place himself under obligations', Charlotte informed George Smith that Patrick would ‘unhesitatingly accept an offer so delicately made … did he think any really useful end could be answered by a visit from Dr Forbes'. It is a measure of Charlotte's desperation that she then went behind her father's back and requested that Dr Forbes would at least comment on Mr Teale's diagnosis and course of treatment. Dr Forbes replied with a speed and kindness that Charlotte was long to remember. He knew Mr Teale well and thought highly of him; his course of treatment was just what he would himself have recommended, but he warned against entertaining sanguine hopes of recovery. Disappointed once more, Charlotte reported his verdict to Ellen, adding, ‘There is some feeble consolation in thinking we are doing the very best that can be done – the agony of forced, total neglect is not now felt as during Emily's illness.'
⁵³

By the beginning of February, the worst of Anne's symptoms had abated; she was less feverish and her cough was less troublesome. Suddenly hopeful that the remedies might be working and that Anne might gain a lasting reprieve, Charlotte began to give some thought to the writing she had neglected for so long. ‘My literary character is effaced for the time –', Charlotte had written to Williams only two weeks before. ‘Should Anne get better, I think I could rally and become Currer Bell once more – but if otherwise – I look no farther – sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.'
⁵⁴
Though new composition had been next to impossible in recent weeks, she had occupied her spare moments in making a fair copy of the first volume of her new
book,
Shirley
. It was therefore with a sense of dismay that Charlotte read
Mary Barton
, the recently published first novel by Mrs Gaskell, which was a powerful indictment of contemporary Manchester life. Set during the terrible distress of the industrial slump of 1842–3, the plot centred on the murder of one of the mill owners by his desperate workmen. Though in feeling, tone and sympathy
Mary Barton
was a world away from
Shirley
, Charlotte could not escape the conclusion that to a certain extent she had been pre-empted in both subject and incident: her novel, too, was set in the north of England during industrial troubles and involved an assassination attempt on a mill owner. The similarity was enough to prompt her to submit the manuscript of her first volume to Smith, Elder & Co., even though this went against the grain: ‘remember –', she warned Williams,

if I shew it to you – it is on two conditions. The first that you give me a faithful opinion – I do not promise to be swayed by it but I should like to have it – the second that you shew it and speak of it to none but Mr Smith. I have always a great horror of premature announcements – they may do harm and can never do good.
⁵⁵

Discovering a few days later that Williams and George Smith had an informal evening chat each day with James Taylor, the manager in charge of the staff of clerks at 65, Cornhill, Charlotte felt that Taylor's exclusion might seem invidious and therefore exempted him also from her general prohibition. Desperately anxious not to produce a second novel inferior to her first, Charlotte declared, ‘I court the keenest criticism', before exhorting them, ‘Be honest therefore all three of you – If you think this book promises less favourably than “Jane Eyre” – say so: it is but trying again.'
⁵⁶

It was to be nearly a month before Charlotte heard Smith, Elder & Co.'s verdict on
Shirley
. The passage of time probably reflected the difficulty facing her friends at the firm: they were undoubtedly sensitive to Charlotte's vulnerability at this time and, though an honest opinion had been sought, it was not possible to foresee the consequences if it was given. In the end, they settled for a general approbation which would encourage their author while expressing reservations on only one or two issues. Both Williams and James Taylor, for instance, complained of a lack of distinctness and impressiveness in
Shirleys
male characters – a criticism which Charlotte acknowledged as being probably just: ‘When I write about women I am sure of my ground', she told Taylor,'– in the other case, I am not so sure.'
⁵⁷

The main criticism, however, was reserved for the first chapter with its boisterous and unflattering portrayal of the ‘shower of curates'. Both George Smith and Williams were of the opinion that this was a misjudgement so serious that it warranted complete removal and the substitution of a new beginning. Charlotte, however, displayed her customary stubbornness. Promising that their advice would be ‘duly weighed', she nevertheless defended it on the same grounds as she had defended the ‘Lowood' portion of
Jane Eyre:
‘– it is true'
, she wrote emphatically, ‘The curates and their ongoings are merely photographed from the life'.
⁵⁸

There was certainly little love lost between Charlotte and the curates who had passed through Haworth Parsonage in recent years. As long ago as the summer of 1845 she had written sharply to Ellen:

I have no desire at all to see your medical clerical curate – I think he must be like all the other curates I have seen – and they seem to me a self-seeking, vain, empty race. At this blessed moment we have no less than three of them in Haworth-Parish – and God knows there is not one to mend another.

The other day they all three – accompanied by Mr Smith (of whom by the bye I have grievous things to tell you) dropped or rather rushed in unexpectedly to tea It was Monday and I was hot & tired – still if they had behaved quietly and decently – I would have served them out their tea in peace – but they began glorifying themselves and abusing Dissenters in such a manner – that my temper lost its balance and I pronounced a few sentences sharply & rapidly which struck them all dumb – Papa was greatly horrified also – I don't regret it.
⁵⁹

Charlotte's vittiolic pen had spared none of them. James Smith was savagely indicted as Mr Malone, but at least there was some justice in the portrayal; James Bradley, the curate of Oakworth, and Joseph Grant, the incumbent of Oxenhope, suffered less severely but had their every failing exposed with more accuracy than charity. To their intense mortification – and the great glee of their parishioners – they were each instantly recognizable, an eventuality Charlotte had not foreseen.

Nevertheless, she did not regret her portrayal of the curates in
Shirley
. She questioned Williams relentlessly as to why he disliked the opening chapter: ‘is it because you think this chapter will render the work liable to severe handling by the press? Is it because knowing as you now do the identity of “Currer Bell” – this scene strikes you as unfeminine –? Is it because it is intrinsically defective and inferior –? I am afraid the two first reasons
would not weigh with me – the last would.' When he and James Taylor replied in unison that the subject required a more artistic treatment, Charlotte rounded on them:

Say what you will – gentlemen – say it as ably as you will – Truth is better than Art. Burns' Songs are better than Bulwer's Epics. Thackeray's rude, careless sketches are preferable to thousands of carefully finished paintings. Ignorant as I am, I dare to hold and maintain that doctrine.
⁶⁰

When she later came to end her novel with a brief resume of the subsequent careers of her curates, she could not resist a sly dig at Williams and Taylor: ‘Were I to give the catastrophe of your life and conversation', she declared of Malone, ‘“Impossible!” would be pronounced here: “untrue!” would be responded there. “Inartistic!” would be solemnly decided. Note well! Whenever you present the actual, simple truth, it is, somehow, always denounced as a lie.'
⁶¹

Charlotte's sudden burst of enthusiasm for her writing was to be as short-lived as the reprieve on Anne's failing health. By the middle of March she was in decline again, a gradual and fluctuating decline but nevertheless inexorable. Both Charlotte and Patrick found it an almost unbearable duty to answer correspondence, particularly when Anne was going through a bad period and the unspoken thought that her death was imminent coloured every waking moment. Charlotte was compelled to answer a letter from Laetitia Wheelwright, one of her Brussels friends, who complained of her silence since her last letter. As that had been written on 14 September, only ten days before the unimagined horror of the train of events was set in motion, Charlotte's reply was a painful recitation of recurrent death and illness. ‘God has hitherto supported me in some sort through all these bitter calamities', she claimed, ‘but there have been hours – days – weeks of inexpressible anguish to undergo – and the cloud of impending distress still lowers dark and sullen above us.'
⁶²