Brontës (134 page)

The reaction which set in following the excitement of her visits to London, Brookroyd and Edinburgh soon became an oppressive gloom. ‘I cannot describe what a time of it I had after my return from London – Scotland &c.', Charlotte later told Ellen, ‘there was a reaction that sunk me to the earth – the deadly silence solitude, desolation were awful – the craving for companionship – the hopelessness of relief – were what I should dread to feel again.'
⁷⁷

About this time, Charlotte received an unexpected visit from a group of grandees. She had just declined an invitation to Harden Grange, the Bingley home of William Busfeild Ferrand, a wealthy landowner, Justice of the Peace and former Member of Parliament for Knaresborough. Two or three days later Mrs Ferrand turned up at the parsonage with a large number of ladies and gentlemen, including two members of the Young England party in the House of Commons, Lord John Manners, ‘tall, stately – black-haired and whiskered', who bore a timely gift of a brace of pheasants for Patrick, and George Smythe, ‘not so distinguished-looking – shy and a little queer—'.\
⁷⁸
Both Manners and Smythe had literary pretensions, but the visit seems to have been prompted as much by curiosity to see ‘Currer Bell' in her own home as by a desire to meet the author herself.

Though such a visit was flattering, it was scarcely welcome. Nor was yet another invitation from the Kay Shuttleworths, though at least this time there was no threat of being shown off round the drawing rooms and public places of London. The Kay Shuttleworths had taken a house on the shores of Lake Windermere for the autumn and winter, which was the reason for the invitation. Though Charlotte was reluctant to accept, the thought of
paying her first visit to the land of the Lake Poets was attractive. Patrick, concerned about her health and perhaps anxious that she should meet new people outside George Smith's circle, urged her to go.
⁷⁹

She set off on 19 August, arriving at eight o'clock in the evening after a tedious journey during which she had to change carriages three times and wait an hour and a half at Lancaster. Sir James was waiting for her at Windermere station and there was a pleasant drive along the wooded banks of the lake edge to Low-wood, then a steep climb up a narrow lane to Briery Close. ‘This place is exquisitely beautiful', Charlotte wrote to her father the day after her arrival, ‘though the weather is cloudy, misty and stormy – but the sun bursts out occasionally and shews the hills and the lake.'
⁸⁰
On the subject of Sir James she remained silent, but she found an instant ally and friend in Mrs Gaskell, who arrived later that same evening. Even at this, their first meeting, Charlotte had none of the tortured shyness which usually afflicted her: remembering Mrs Gaskell's kind and sympathetic letter on the publication of
Shirley
, Charlotte came straight up to her the moment she arrived and shook her by the hand. Later, during tea, Mrs Gaskell had the opportunity for a closer observation of the ‘little lady in black silk gown'. ‘She is (as she calls herself) undeveloped;' she told Catherine Winkworth,

thin and more than
Vi
a head shorter than I, soft brown hair not so dark as mine, eyes (very good and expressive looking straight & open at you) of the same colour, a reddish face; large mouth & many teeth gone; altogether plain; the forehead square, broad, and rather overhanging. She has a very sweet voice, rather hesitates in choosing her expressions, but when chosen they seem without an effort, admirable and just befitting the occasion.
⁸¹

Lady Kay Shuttleworth, ill with a cold, was confined to the house, but she still took the opportunity to gossip with Mrs Gaskell, giving her a highly romanticized view of Charlotte's home and background, full of half-truths and downright untruths, and portraying Patrick as ‘the strange half mad husband' who drove his wife to an early death, sawed up chairs and burnt hearth rugs in fits of temper. All of which, while it increased Mrs Gaskell's sympathy for Charlotte Brontë, was also irreparably to prejudice her against Patrick.
⁸²

Charlotte's own confidences to Mrs Gaskell were much less dramatic: she talked about the Clergy Daughters' School, where the pain she had suffered from hunger was not to be told, about her father's reaction to reading
Jane
Eyre
and about her own prospect of a lonely death.
⁸³
‘She is quiet sensible unaffected with high noble aims', Mrs Gaskell enthused. ‘She is sterling and true; and if she is a little bitter she checks herself, and speaks kindly and hopefully of things and people directly; the wonder to me is how she can have kept heart and power alive in her life of desolation.' Charlotte's own impressions of Mrs Gaskell, who was six years her senior, were equally favourable, if more subdued. ‘I was truly glad of her companionship She is a woman of the most genuine talent – of cheerful, pleasing and cordial manners and – I believe – of a kind and good heart.'
⁸⁴

The morning after Mrs Gaskell's arrival, Sir James took the two ladies and a Mr Moseley, an inspector of schools, who had joined them for breakfast, out on the lake. There Charlotte and Mrs Gaskell discovered a mutual liking for Francis Newman, the controversial free thinker, brother of the more famous Catholic convert, and for John Ruskin; they later quarrelled in friendly fashion, over politics and Tennyson, whom Charlotte loathed. After dinner they actually set off to drive to Coniston to visit the Tennysons, who were staying in the area, but to the wordless fury of Mrs Gaskell, Sir James decided to turn back when it began to rain.
⁸⁵

An evening visit to the home of another famous writer, Thomas Arnold, did materialize, though Charlotte was so nervous at the thought of going there that she was afflicted with an acute headache all day. She had not then read the
Life of Dr Arnold
, but she had formed a highly idealized impression of the former headmaster of Rugby and Regius Professor of History at Oxford, who had died eight years previously. It was, therefore, an intense disappointment to meet his widow and daughters at Fox How, the holiday home he had built above Rydal Water. The journey there, through Ambleside and along the beautiful riverside of the valley winding up the back of Loughrigg Fell, past the houses where Thomas De Quincey had lived and Dora Wordsworth after her marriage to Edward Quillinan, was to linger long in Charlotte's memory. Even though it was almost dark when they reached the unpretentious Lakeland stone house, magnificently situated at the head of the little valley, Charlotte could still perceive that the situation was ‘exquisitely lovely: ‘the house looked like a nest half-buried in flowers and creepers – and, dusk as it was, I could feel that the valley and the hills round were beautiful as imagination could dream'.
⁸⁶
Mrs Arnold, an amiable woman who had once been very pretty, greeted Charlotte in what Sir James and Mrs Gaskell both afterwards assured her was a ‘conventional manner', but which she found ‘lacking that genuineness and simplicity one seemed to have a right to expect
in the chosen life-companion of Dr Arnold'. Neither she nor her daughters were intellectual and, though impressed by the show of family unity they presented, Charlotte thought their opinions were imitative rather than original, sentimental rather than sound.She herself made an equally poor first impression on the Arnolds: ‘Jane Aire is not at all liked' was the succinct verdict they passed on to their friends.
⁸⁷

Most of the time, however, was taken up with driving about in a carriage to show Charlotte the glorious Westmorland scenery: ‘could I have wandered about amongst those hills alone – I could have drank in all their beauty –', Charlotte sighed. ‘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 She-Artist.'
⁸⁸
In fact, the one fly in the ointment throughout a visit which would otherwise have been most congenial to Charlotte was Sir James Kay Shuttleworth himself. To their frustration and amusement he persisted in lecturing his lady authors on ‘Art' and ‘bringing ourselves down to a lower level' and ‘the beauty of expediency' – this, as Mrs Gaskell pointed out from a man ‘who has never indulged in the exercise of any talent which could not bring him a tangible and speedy return'. Charlotte, who was forced to accept Sir James's ‘advice' with a show of ‘calm resignation', felt more bitterly towards their host than Mrs Gaskell. ‘I honour his intellect – with his heart – I believe I shall never have sympathy … To Authors as a class (the imaginative portion of them) he has a natural antipathy. Their virtues give him no pleasure – their faults are wormwood and gall in his soul.' Acknowledging his kindness to her and Mrs Gaskell's belief that he had a sincere and strong friendship for her, Charlotte nevertheless admitted ‘I scarcely desire a continuation of the interest he professes in me – were he to forget me – I could not feel regret –'.
⁸⁹

As usual, once her visit was over, Charlotte was glad that she had been, though she had had no wish to prolong it beyond a week.
⁹⁰
A few days later, she sat down to write to her new-found friend.

Papa and I have just had tea; he is sitting quietly in his room, and I in mine; ‘storms of rain' are sweeping over the garden and churchyard; as to the moors – they are hidden in thick fog. Though alone – I am not unhappy; I have a thousand things to be thankful for, and – amongst the rest – that this morning I
received a letter from you, and that this evening – I have the privilege of answering it.
⁹¹

She was equally cheerful with Ellen, who seems to have been depressed following a visit to Tranby, where both Amelia Ringrose and her sister Rosy were deep in preparations for their weddings. ‘Cheer up – dear Nell – and try not to stagnate –', she urged Ellen. ‘Humanity cannot escape its fate which is to drink a mixed cup – Let us believe that the gall and the vinegar are salutary.' Even a visit from Joe Taylor failed to throw her: she was able to listen to him with equanimity, not least because, now that his marriage was arranged, he looked forward to it with quiet satisfaction. Having seen all he wanted to see of life, he was now prepared to settle.
⁹²

All in all, Charlotte's life seemed to have taken a turn for the better. Her health had benefited from her excursion to the Lakes and her father's appetite and spirits had improved since her return. James Taylor, after a long silence, had resumed his correspondence and was sending the
Athenaeum
to her. In addition, a notice of the kind ‘over which an author rejoices with trembling' had appeared in the
Palladium.
⁹³
This anonymous review was the first to enthuse seriously about
Wuthering Heights
, though its author, Sydney Dobell, refused to believe that it was not an early work by Currer Bell. ‘Not a subordinate place or person in this novel, but bears more or less the stamp of high genius', Dobell had declared. ‘It is the unformed writing of a giant's hand; the “large utterance” of a baby god.'
Jane Eyre
exhibited all the same qualities brought to maturity. These were also evident in
Shirley
, but ‘labouring on an exhausted soil. Israel is at work, indeed; but there is a grievous want of straw, and the groan of the people is perceptible'.
Shirley
, he accurately perceived, was written by an artist not spoilt but maimed and disabled by criticism. He urged ‘Currer Bell', in her next novel, to ignore the critics and remember as far as possible the frame of mind in which she had sat down to write
Wuthering Heights;
maturity would prevent her making the mistakes which had marred her earliest work.
⁹⁴

The appearance of this review seems to have prompted William Smith Williams to suggest that Smith, Elder & Co. should reprint
Wuthering Heights
and
Agnes Grey
in their new cheap, single-volume format. Charlotte leapt at the chance, offering to write a preface and explanatory notice of the authors, but, significantly, in the light of what happened to Emily's second novel, declining to add any other compositions by them ‘as I would not
offer a line to the publication of which my sisters themselves would have objected'. Her opinion of Anne's second novel is also illuminating:

‘Wildfell Hall' it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake – it was too little consonant with the character – tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring, inexperienced writer. She wrote it under a strange, conscientious, half-ascetic notion of accomplishing a painful penance and a severe duty. Blameless in deed and almost in thought – there was from her very childhood a tinge of religious melancholy in her mind – this I ever suspected – and I have found, amongst her papers, mournful proofs that such was the case.
⁹⁵

Charlotte, it appears, was prepared to consign her sister's novel to oblivion because she considered its subject at odds with her own perception of what Anne's character was and ought to have been.

Charlotte was fortunate in being able to leave the complicated negotiations for permission to reprint her sisters' books in the competent – and ruthless – hands of George Smith. While Newby made himself ‘scarce as violets at Christmas', evading all attempts to pin him down to a meeting ‘like a Publisher metamorphosed into a Rainbow',
⁹⁶
Charlotte set to work on a biographical notice of her sisters that would, once and for all, establish the separate identities of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Giving a brief outline of their lives from the point at which they had assumed authorship, and omitting all mention of the rest of their family or their place of residence, Charlotte went on to describe her sisters' characters. Her words, because of their persuasive power, have ever since been taken to be written on tablets of stone, handed down from the Great Author; absolute and unquestionable truths. Yet, as Charlotte herself confessed in her concluding sentence, they were written with only one purpose in mind, and that was to answer the critics who had complained that ‘Ellis' and ‘Acton' loved the coarse, brutal and degrading. Every word was carefully chosen to nail the lies and assumptions which lay behind the reviews. Instead, Charlotte built the edifice under which the Brontës have sheltered ever since, portraying them as children of nature, whose inexperience, innocence and sense of truth led them to portray life as they saw it, in ignorance of the sensibilities of a more sophisticated reading public. To that end she had to pretend that they were uneducated and wrote purely from ‘the dictates of intuition'.