Brontës (138 page)

As her earlier comments had indicated, Charlotte was well aware that the reason for this visit was to make her a formal offer of marriage, the third she had received. It was one she could not accept.

An absence of five years – a dividing expanse of three oceans – the wide difference between a man's active career and a woman's passive existence – these things are almost equivalent to an eternal separation – But there is another thing which forms a barrier more difficult to pass than any of these. Would Mr T— and I ever suit –? Could I ever feel for him enough love to accept of him as a husband? Friendship – gratitude – esteem – I have – but each moment he came near me – and that I could see his eyes fastened on me – my veins ran ice.
⁴³

The very things which Charlotte had tried so many times to convince Ellen were all that were necessary for a happy marriage were not enough for
Charlotte herself. It was not simply that she did not and could not love James Taylor, but that she had an overpowering physical aversion to him. It would have been strange for a woman so sensitive to her own plainness to reject a man purely on the grounds of his appearance: what lay at the bottom of that aversion was deeply revealing. Small in stature, red-headed, with his ‘determined, dreadful nose', James Taylor reminded her irresistibly of Branwell. It says much about Charlotte's relationship with her brother that this was the only occasion on which a resemblance to one of her dead siblings did not predispose Charlotte in that person's favour but had the opposite effect. ‘I saw him very near and once through my glass –', she wrote to Ellen on the evening of Taylor's visit, ‘the resemblance to Branwell struck me forcibly – it is marked.'
⁴⁴
As a reason for rejecting Taylor, Charlotte could not even admit this to herself, let alone anyone else. A couple of weeks later, when she had had time to consider her response more fully, she offered Ellen another explanation.

I am sure he has estimable and sterling qualities – but with every disposition – with every wish – with every intention even to look on him in the most favourable point of view at his last visit – it was impossible to me in my inmost heart to think of him as one that might one day be acceptable as a husband. It would sound harsh were I to tell even
you
the estimate I felt compelled to form respecting him; dear Nell – I looked for something of the gentleman – something I mean of the
natural
gentleman – you know I can dispense with acquired polish – and for looks – I know myself too well to think that I have any right to be exacting on that point – I could not find one gleam – I could not see one passing glimpse of true good-breeding – it is hard to say – but it is
true
. In mind too; – though clever, – he is second-rate; – thoroughly second-rate. One does not like to say these things – but one had better be honest – Were I to marry him – my heart would bleed – in pain and humiliation – I could not –
could
not look up to him – No – if Mr T— be the only husband Fate offers to me – single I must always remain.
⁴⁵

Interestingly, Patrick took James Taylor's part against his daughter.

I discover with some surprise that Papa has taken a decided liking to Mr Taylor. The marked kindness of his manner to the little man when he bid him good bye – exhorting him to be ‘true to himself his Country and his God' and wishing him all good wishes – struck me with some astonishment at the time – and
whenever he has alluded to him since it has been with significant eulogy. When I alleged that he was ‘no gentleman' – he seemed out of patience with me for the objection.
⁴⁶

Neither his daughter nor her suitor had offered him an explanation for Taylor's sudden visit to Haworth but, with his usual penetration in such matters, Patrick had seen its purpose. ‘I have told him nothing – yet he seems to be au fait to the whole business –', Charlotte complained; ‘I could think at some moments – his guesses go farther than mine. I believe he thinks a prospective union, deferred for 5 years, with such a decorous reliable personage would be a very proper and advisable affair –'. Only the previous autumn, Charlotte had dismissed gossip about her imminent marriage as ‘twaddle', alleging that her father found ‘the least allusion' to the idea of her marrying ‘most offensive'.
⁴⁷
His reaction to a genuine offer of marriage belies this statement. Clearly he was still concerned about his daughter's future: in five years' time he would probably be dead and it would be a comfort to him in the meantime to know that when Taylor returned from India, his daughter would be provided with a decent home, income and husband. The prospect held no fears for him and he had no intention of standing in the way of her making an advantageous marriage. He even told Charlotte that if she married and left him he would give up housekeeping and go into lodgings. As his daughter refused to confide in him, he could only guess her intentions and hint his approbation. ‘I ask no questions and he asks me none,' Charlotte told Ellen, ‘and if he did, I should have nothing to tell him – nor he me for he & Mr T— were never long enough alone together to have had any communication on the matter'.
⁴⁸

James Taylor gave Charlotte a book at parting, requesting that she would keep it for his sake and adding that he hoped she would continue to write to him in India: ‘your letters
have
been and
will
be a greater refreshment than you can think or I can tell', he had told her sadly as he left. ‘And so he is gone, and stern and abrupt little man as he is – too often jarring as are his manners – his absence and the exclusion of his idea from my mind – leave me certainly with less support and in deeper solitude than before.'
⁴⁹

As if to emphasize the fact that in turning down James Taylor's offer of marriage Charlotte had committed herself to a lonely and uncertain future, on the very evening of his departure, Patrick was struck down with a sudden
sickness and she had to put him to bed early. When he at last fell into a doze she left him: ‘I came down to the dining-room with a sense of weight, fear and desolation hard to express and harder to endure.' ‘A wish that you were with me did cross my mind', she told Ellen, ‘but I repulsed it as a most selfish wish – … to think that one is burdening and racking others – makes all worse.' Though far away in New Zealand, Mary Taylor spoke truly when she said, ‘It must be gloomy indeed for Charlotte to see her Father's health declining. It is frightful to see death coming to take the last, & one can scarcely calculate the effects on a weakened painstruck mind like Charlotte's.'
⁵⁰

Patrick continued unwell for some time, feeling feverish and sickly and, unusually for him, not getting up for breakfast. It was only when it became clear that the illness was an inflammation of the stomach, rather than a recurrence of his dreaded bronchitis, that Charlotte's anxiety receded a little.
⁵¹
That her fears were understandably exaggerated is suggested by the fact that Patrick himself was still campaigning vigorously on several fronts. On 12 February 1851 he had written to the General Board of Health, pointing out that it was long since he had first applied for assistance in gaining a supply of pure water for the township: ‘We are greatly surprized and grieved that nothing has yet been done towards the furtherance of this desirable end', he complained. It was not simply that London was being dilatory, however, for opposition to the inspector's recommendations had been quietly gathering momentum. In response to a public meeting at the end of March, Patrick had to request the removal from the scheme of several outlying farms because the expense of supplying them with piped water was too high and also that the churchyard should not be closed until a new burial ground had been found to replace it.
⁵²

If Patrick had hoped to unite the people of Haworth behind him by making these concessions, he failed signally. Within days of the meeting, several of the wealthiest and most powerful inhabitants – most of them members of Patrick's own congregation – were writing behind his back to seek exemption from the new water rate which would have to be imposed to pay for the reforms. Patrick, ever the champion of the underdog, was almost driven to despair. ‘There has already been long, and tedious delay –', he thundered,

there has been a deal of sickness amongst us, and there is now a great want of pure water, which ills might have been prevented, or palliated, had the remedial
measures we hope for, been duly applied. A few interested individuals, might try to throw difficulties in the way, but by the large majority, consisting chiefly of the working people, there is an anxious desire that the work should on the earliest opportunity be done –

He closed his letter with a peremptory ‘Please to send me an early answer.'
⁵³
Patrick was also at loggerheads with the Church Pastoral Aid Society which had effectively paid for him to have a curate since 1838. Despite numerous letters, however, they had not confirmed the grant for the forthcoming year and Patrick was deeply concerned. Without the grant he could not pay Arthur Bell Nicholls' salary and without him he could not perform his parish duties. It was to be nearly two months more, causing Patrick ‘long, and powerful suspense', before he finally heard that his grant had been renewed. Even then, it seems it was largely owing to the intervention of the Reverend A. P. Irvine, the district secretary based in Manchester. Writing to thank him on 15 April, Patrick announced that he had taken heart from the renewal of his grant and had also applied for a lay reader with the object of rooting out reactionary High Church Puseyism in the chapelry. Displaying all his old energy and vigour, he declared:

I thoroughly detest it both root and branch, Yea, in all its bearings and habits, whether under the pretence, of decency, it appears in formal dresses, or with the plea of conscience, it talks of
carrying out the Liturgy
– (in order that it may carry in the
Breviary)
or whether it, may shew itself in candles or in crosses, or in vigils or in fastings, whatever colour or form it may assume, it is equally odious to me –

Patrick was therefore seeking ‘a judicious, pious, Evangelical young man' who, ‘by entering into every house and doing his best, might, under providence, be an instrument of much good, and no evil'. Though he still took two services every Sunday himself, ‘I am unable to run over these hills, as I once did – And my Curate though an active and diligent young man, cannot do all that ought to be done.'
⁵⁴
Though Patrick's health might be failing in this, his seventy-fifth year, his spirit was as strong as ever.

Charlotte, on the other hand, was becoming more and more miserable at home. On 12 April, she turned down an invitation to stay at Hunsworth with Joe and Amelia Taylor on the grounds that ‘I don't like to carry low spirits from home'. As this had been her main excuse for travelling away
from Haworth in the past, it seems more likely that Charlotte simply could not face the prospect of staying with Amelia who, after a fraught pregnancy, was not far off her confinement. The fuss and concern over every little alteration in Amelia's condition was more than Charlotte could bear and she had once or twice been provoked to a sharp retort in private to Ellen.
⁵⁵
This suspicion is confirmed by Charlotte's positively joyful acceptance of an invitation from Mrs Smith only five days later.

Before I received your note, I was nursing a comfortable and complacent conviction that I had quite made up my mind not to go to London this year: the Great Exhibition was nothing – only a series of bazaars under a magnified hothouse – and I myself was in a pharisaical state of superiority to temptation. But Pride has its fall. I read your invitation and immediately felt a great wish to descend from my stilts. Not to conceal the truth – I should like to come and see you extremely well.
⁵⁶

Writing to inform George Smith of her ‘somewhat egregious failure' to stay at home until she had written her next book, she confessed, ‘One can't help it. One does not profess to be made out of granite.' She also admitted to being somewhat nettled – even a little pained – by Mrs Gaskell's and Harriet Martineau's insistence on treating her like an invalid and securing her invitations to stay in the milder climate of southern counties with ‘kind but misled strangers'. ‘Why may not I be well like other people?' Charlotte asked him. ‘I think I am reasonably well; not strong or capable of much continuous exertion, (which I do not remember that I ever was) and apt no doubt to look haggard if over-fatigued – but otherwise I have no ailment and I maintain that I am well, and hope (D.V.) to continue so awhile.' Despite her constant exhortations to the gentlemen of Smith, Elder & Co. that they should only write when they had time, Charlotte could not resist a sally that revealed just how dependent she was on their letters: ‘Please to tell Mr Williams that I dare on no account come to London till he is friends with me, which I am sure he cannot be, as I have never heard from him for nearly three months.'
⁵⁷

In preparation for her London visit Charlotte again renewed her wardrobe. On her next trip to Leeds, Ellen was commissioned to ask in the stores for a selection of black and white lace cloaks and some small size chemisettes for every day and best wear to be sent to Haworth so that she could make her choice in the privacy of her own home. Having chosen a
black lace shawl, however, she discovered that when she wore it against her black satin dress the beauty of the lace was lost and it looked brown and rusty. She therefore wrote to Mr Stocks, the storekeeper, who obligingly sent to London for a white replacement. ‘The price is less – being but 1£ 14s. it is pretty – neat and light – looks well on black – and upon reasoning the matter over, I came to the philosophic conclusion that it would be no shame for a person of my means to wear a cheaper thing – so I think I shall take it: and if you ever see it – and call it “trumpery” so much the worse.'
⁵⁸
As this attempt to buy on her behalf had turned out so disastrously, Charlotte herself took a trip to Leeds at the beginning of May. At Hunt and Halls, she chose a bonnet ‘which seemed grave and quiet there amongst all the splendours – but now it looks infinitely too gay with its pink lining – I saw some beautiful silks of pale sweet colours but had not the spirit or the means to launch out at the rate of 5s per yd and went and bought a black silk at 3s after all – I rather regret this – because Papa says he would have lent me a sovereign if he had known. I believe if you had been there you would have forced me to to get into \debt/.'
⁵⁹