Brontës (136 page)

Other admirers also forced themselves on Charlotte's attention. One, signing himself ‘K.T.', offered to give Charlotte a copy of the record he had kept of his friends' opinions on
Jane Eyre;
she declined this but said she would be interested to learn the first impressions
Shirley
had made on unbiased minds. ‘“Shirley”, it would seem – has not been a general favourite; of the reason for its comparative failure, I have not a sufficiently clear idea,
and any information tending to enlighten me on that point, I should esteem a boon.'
⁴
Despite his irritatingly verbose style, ‘K.T.' had some profound thoughts on
Shirley
which he diffidently proffered to its author: it had too many characters, the interest was not sufficiently sustained and was too scattered, he had difficulty in understanding the motives of the characters and little sympathy with their natures; most importantly, it was a book ‘founded upon and curbed by actual appearances and real people'. Her ‘obligation to the literal' had hampered and tied up her writer's powers. Interestingly, too, he guessed that Charlotte's own preference for
Shirley
lay in the fact that she had laboured over it and that in the superiority of the descriptive powers she had employed there, she had mistaken ‘the satisfaction of the artist for the merit of the book'. Writing to thank him, Charlotte, much to her amusement, astounded ‘K.T.' by displaying her extraordinary powers of analysis and divining that he was young, an Irishman and an artist. ‘Why should it annoy you that I discovered your Country?' she asked him. ‘Is Ireland then a Nazareth – a Galilee from which no prophet or good thing can come?'
⁵

Charlotte's ability to analyse character sometimes gave her an almost prophetic ability to foresee the future, as John Stores Smith had discovered when she warned him that he would not be able to earn his living as a writer in London and as Joe Taylor was soon to discover. His marriage to Amelia Ringrose had finally taken place in October and Charlotte had received a happy letter from Amelia expressing ‘wondrous faith in her husband's intellectual powers and acquirements'. ‘Joe's illusion will soon be over –', Charlotte muttered darkly, ‘but Amelia's will not – and therein she is happier than he –'. Even before their marriage, Charlotte had correctly foreseen that Amelia's affection would soon cease to find a response in Joe Taylor and that her overtures would meet only chilly silence. ‘I fancy – however – this is the fate of most feeling women – and when they find there is no remedy for the inevitable – they submit to circumstances – and take resignation as a substitute for content', was her cynical comment to Ellen. ‘Amelia will do this; but not yet – nor for two or three years will it be required of her. You will see her happy for that time – nor after that time will she admit herself to be otherwise than happy – indeed if children come – the mother will well support the wife: the bridal interest lost – maternal interest will replace it.'
⁶

Apart from her correspondence and occasional visitors, Charlotte had only her books to divert her. G.H. Lewes had lent her some French novels during her London visit, which she now found time to read, disliking
Balzac and preferring the ‘Fantastic fanatical, unpractical enthusiast', George Sand.
⁷
Altogether more to her taste were the books from Smith, Elder & Co., which included
The Roman
, a long poem by Sydney Dobell, the
Palladium
reviewer, and, at her request, following her visit to Arnold's family in the Lakes, A. P. Stanley's
Life of Thomas Arnold
. This latter book interested her deeply and she found much to admire in both the man and his work. ‘I was struck too by the almost unbroken happiness of his life …' she told Williams, rather wistfully, ‘owing partly to a singular exemption from those deep and bitter griefs which most human beings are called on to endure … One feels thankful to know that it has been permitted to any man to live such a life.'
⁸

Thomas Arnold was to become almost a heroic figure to her. ‘Oh! I wish Dr Arnold were yet living or that a second Dr Arnold could be found', Charlotte declared to Williams. ‘Were there but ten such men amongst the Hierarchs of the Church of England – she might bid defiance to all the scarlet hats and stockings in the Pope's gift –'.
⁹
This outburst was prompted by the Pope's appointment of Nicholas Wiseman as Cardinal and Archbishop of Westminster. As it was the first such appointment since the Elizabethan Reformation, it caused a hysterical reaction among Protestants, particularly Anglicans, who saw the creation of Roman Catholic bishoprics in England as
papal aggression. Wiseman himself was especially feared and loathed because of his influence on the Oxford Movement and his active role in winning over Puseyites to the Church of Rome – he had confirmed John Henry Newman into the Catholic faith himself. Now there were rumours that he had aspirations to the Papacy and that, if successful, he would abolish the celibacy of the Catholic priesthood and thus remove the last obstacle to reunion with the Church of England. Patrick Brontë himself had been moved to write ‘A Tract for the Times' for the
Leeds Intelligencer
, pointing out, more in sorrow than anger, that ‘the whole fabric of our establishment is shaken to its very centre, and threatens to fall. The people in general no longer look on our establishment as the bulwark of Protestantism, but a Romish nursery – whilst true churchmen are overwhelmed with confusion and sorrow.' The Catholics and other dissenters should be warned, he added, that if they overthrew the Church of England, all religion would be overthrown and people would look instead to the Goddess of Reason as they had done during the French Revolution.
¹⁰

The clergy of the archdeaconry of Craven, to which Haworth belonged, sent a long letter to the same paper demanding a meeting to discuss the papal aggression. This was held in Leeds on 27 November and, although Patrick himself was not well enough to undertake the journey, Arthur Bell Nicholls was one of the 250 clergymen who put their names to the resulting resolution condemning the Pope for dishonouring the Queen, ignoring the existence of the Church of England and sowing the seeds of strife throughout the land.
¹¹

Charlotte's loathing of Catholicism, which had been deepened by her own susceptibility to it in Brussels, was fanned to a white heat by these events. Writing to George Smith, she could not resist a sardonic portrayal of her publishers setting up an oratory in the small backroom at Cornhill, ‘with a saint in a niche – two candles always burning, a “prie-dieu” and a handsomely bound Missal; also a Confessional Chair – very comfortable, for the Priest – and a square of carpet or – better – the bare boards for the penitent'. Messrs Taylor, Williams and Smith would daily tell their beads and sign themselves with holy water, once a month making confession and receiving absolution. ‘The ease this will give to your now never-disburthened heretic consciences – words can but feebly express'. The alternative, if they resisted, was martyrdom at Smithfield, ‘some First Sunday in Advent (1860)'. ‘Forgive all the nonsense of this letter –', Charlotte asked George Smith, ‘there is such a pleasure and relief either in writing or talking a little nonsense sometimes to anybody who is sensible enough to understand – and good-natured enough to pardon it.'
¹²

The necessity of finding some escape from the oppression of the monotony and silence of her daily life at last drove Charlotte from home again. Anxious to see the new edition of
Wuthering Heights & Agnes Grey
through the press, she had turned down invitations to stay with Ellen, the newly married Taylors, Sir James Kay Shuttleworth and, reluctantly, Mrs Gaskell, though she clung to the hope that a visit to her might be arranged in January. As the second anniversary of Emily's death loomed, however, Charlotte could no longer bear the ‘intolerably poignant' memories which had haunted her for the past three months. She accepted an invitation to stay with Harriet Martineau for ‘a
cosy
winter visit' at Ambleside in the Lake District.
¹³

Charlotte arrived on 16 December at The Knoll, Miss Martineau's pleasant and unpretentious Lakeland stone villa built on a slight rise in the plain at the northern end of Lake Windermere. Standing at the foot of Loughrigg Fell, it was surrounded by mountains at the rear and looked out towards the lake at the front. Harriet Martineau was something of an eccentric. She had
designed the house herself and was undertaking experiments in self-sufficiency by keeping her own livestock and growing her own food. A tall and large-built woman of forty-eight, she enjoyed a robust health which neither her intellectual pursuits nor the handicap of her deafness had undermined: ‘her powers of labour – of exercise and social cheerfulness are beyond my comprehension', Charlotte reported to her father with awe.

Her visitors enjoy the most perfect liberty; what she claims for herself she allows them. I rise at my own hour, breakfast alone – (she is up at five, takes a cold bath and a walk by starlight and has finished breakfast and got to her work by 7 o'clock) I pass the morning in the drawing-room – she in her study. At 2 o'clock we meet, work, talk and walk together till 5 – her dinner hour – spend the evening together – when she converses fluently, abundantly and with the most complete frankness – I go to my own room soon after ten – she sits up writing letters till twelve.
¹⁴

For Charlotte the week of her visit passed quickly and enjoyably. She could not entirely avoid the Kay Shuttleworths, who were still at Briery Close, but as they were both unwell she was not obliged to see as much of them as might otherwise have been the case. Nevertheless, Sir James called almost daily to take her out in his carriage and Harriet Martineau had arranged plenty of other visits for her.
¹⁵
They called at Rydal Mount, home of the recently deceased Poet Laureate, William Wordsworth, and met his widow and niece.
¹⁶
They also dined one evening at the house of Wordsworth's son-in-law, Edward Quillinan, where Charlotte met Matthew Arnold, the only other guest, for the first time. He described her as ‘past thirty and plain, with expressive gray eyes though' and said he talked to her ‘of her curates, of French novels, and her education in a school at Brussels'. Charlotte's first impressions were unfavourable: though ‘Striking and prepossessing in appearance – his manner displeases from its seeming foppery', and she thought ‘the Shade of Dr Arnold seemed to me to frown on his young representative'. However, she soon discovered that, like his mother, he improved upon acquaintance: ‘erelong a real modesty appeared under his assumed conceit, and some genuine intellectual aspirations as well as high educational acquirements displaced superficial affectations'.
¹⁷

After an early dinner, which Miss Martineau had made a condition of the visit so that she could get her delicate guest home before nightfall, the ladies returned to The Knoll where the proofs of Miss Martineau's new
book had just arrived. This was her
Letters on the Law of Man's Social Nature and Development
, which she had co-written with Henry Atkinson, and it was the first exposition of' avowed Atheism and Materialism' Charlotte had ever read. Miss Martineau read some of the
Letters
to Charlotte, and though she strongly disagreed with their doctrine, she was impressed with ‘the tone of calm power' in the writing. Her view of the completed book, given privately to James Taylor, was one of instinctive horror. To one who had lost so many members of her family, the ‘unequivocal declaration of disbelief in the existence of a God or a Future Life' was a prospect not to be borne. ‘The strangest thing is that we are called on to rejoice over this hopeless blank – to receive this bitter bereavement as great gain – to welcome this unutterable desolation as a state of pleasant freedom. Who
could
do this if he would? Who
would
do it if he could?'
¹⁸

It was hardly surprising that Charlotte felt Miss Martineau had lost her way in writing this sort of book, or that she urged her to return to novel-writing and to produce another
Deerbrook
. On another occasion, Miss Martineau read the opening chapter of her
Introduction to the History of the Peace
out loud to her guest. Its subject was Wellington and the Peninsular War and, after two or three pages, Miss Martineau was amazed when Charlotte looked up at her, stole her hand into hers and said, with tears running down her cheeks, ‘Oh! I do thank you! Oh! we are of one mind! Oh! I thank you for this justice to the man.' As Miss Martineau remarked, ‘I saw at once there was a touch of idolatry in the case, but it was a charming enthusiasm.'
¹⁹

On the evening before her departure, Charlotte finally persuaded Miss Martineau to try the experiment of mesmerizing her. Harriet Martineau was one of the most vocal exponents of this nineteenth-century fashion for relieving mental and physical illness through hypnotism, but even she was reluctant to try its effects on Charlotte, in whose nerves she had no confidence. Charlotte was ‘strangely pertinacious', however, and on that final Sunday, when Miss Martineau could no longer plead her own tiredness as an excuse, she insisted that the experiment should be made. They began the process, but at the moment when Charlotte cried out that she was under the influence, Miss Martineau's own nerve failed her and she abandoned the attempt, softening the blow to Charlotte by telling her that in time she might prove to be an excellent subject.
²⁰

The visit passed off remarkably well, considering the disparate natures of the two literary lions. ‘I trust to have derived benefit from my visit to Miss Martineau', Charlotte wrote to Williams, on her return, ‘– a visit more
interesting I certainly never paid: if self-sustaining strength can be acquired by example, I ought to have got good – but my nature is not hers – I could not make it so though I were to submit it seventy times seven to the furnace of affliction and discipline it for an age under the hammer and anvil of toil and self-sacrifice.'
²¹
However much she had enjoyed her visit, Charlotte had no wish to extend it beyond a week: Miss Martineau had relatives and friends coming for Christmas so there would be no more delightful
tête-à-têtes
by the fireside, Miss Martineau talking and Charlotte sitting mute. The Kay Shuttleworths pressed her to stay with them, but Charlotte made her excuses and went instead to Birstall and the more congenial company of Ellen Nussey, leaving her father to spend Christmas alone at Haworth.
²²