Brontës (155 page)

There was a sense of coming to the end of an era in all this which was intensified by the visits Charlotte paid to the friends of her maiden days at the beginning of May. Writing to Mrs Gaskell, appropriately enough on 26 April which had been designated a Day of National Humiliation and Prayer on account of the war against Russia, Charlotte revealed that she had not passed on her invitation to Mr Nicholls because she did not want to ‘unsettle him' by letting him accompany her.
¹¹
As Mrs Gaskell correctly
suspected, however, Charlotte was more concerned about how Mr NichoUs, whom she termed ‘a Puseyite and very stiff', would react to her Unitarian friends. ‘I had a little talk with him about
my
. “latitudinarianism” and
his
opposite quality', she told Mrs Gaskell,

He did not bristle up at all – nor feel stiff and unmanageable – he only groaned a little over something in ‘Shirley' touching ‘baptismal regeneration and a wash-hand basin.' Yet if he is indulgent to some points in me – I shall have carefully to respect certain reverse points in him. I don't mean to trifle with matters deep-rooted and delicate of conscience and principle. I know that when once married I shall often have to hold my tongue on topics which heretofore have rarely failed to set that unruly member in tolerably facile motion. But I
will not
be a bigot – My heart will always turn to the good of every sect and class.
¹²

Invitations for Mr NichoUs to visit Hunsworth and Brookroyd were also forthcoming, but were turned down on his behalf because Mr Cator, his rector, was away in London till June ‘and he always stipulates that his Curate shall remain at Kirk-Smeaton while he is away'.
¹³
This, as we shall see, did not prevent Mr NichoUs visiting his fiancée at Haworth in his vicar's absence.

On 1 May, Charlotte set out for Manchester. Her visit to Plymouth Grove was to last an all too brief four days, but it passed off extremely well. Mrs Gaskell was all agog to learn the details of Charlotte's romance and relayed the gossip with all possible speed to her friends. Allowing for her incorrigible embroidering, the description is nevertheless a dramatic insight into the clash of wills between father and daughter.

To hear her description of the conversation with her father when she quietly insisted on her right to see something more of Mr NichoUs was really fine. Her father thought that she had a chance of some body higher or at least farther removed from poverty. She said ‘Father I am not a young girl, not a young woman even – I never was pretty. I now am ugly. At your death I shall have 3oo£ besides the little I have earned myself – do you think there are many men who would serve seven years for me?' And again when he renewed the conversation and asked her if she would marry a curate? – ‘Yes I must marry a curate if I marry at all; not merely a curate but
your
curate; not merely
your
curate but he must live in the house with you, for I cannot leave you'. The sightless old man stood up & said solemnly ‘Never. I will never have another man in this house', and
stalked our of the room. For a week he never spoke to her. She had not made up her mind to accept Mr Nicholls & the worry on both sides made her ill – then the old servant interfered, and asked him, sitting blind & alone, ‘if he wished to kill his daughter?;' and went up to her and abused Mr Nicholls for not having ‘more brass.' And so it has ended where it has done.
¹⁴

Mrs Gaskell positively hugged herself with glee at the knowledge that she had played her own little part in bringing the couple together, sending the letter announcing Charlotte's engagement to Richard Monckton Milnes and John Forster and laughing over her account of Mr Nicholls' puzzlement to account for Mr Milnes' interest in him.
¹⁵

Charlotte also seems to have unburdened herself to Katie Winkworth, a distant relative of Mrs Gaskell's, whose singing of Scottish ballads had so entranced her on a previous visit. They had a long conversation on the merits and demerits of Mr Nicholls. ‘I cannot conceal from myself that he is
not
intellectual', she had declared, ‘there are many places into which he could not follow me intellectually.' Katie had robustly pointed out that ‘if a man had a firm, constant, affectionate, reliable nature, with tolerable practical sense, I should be much better satisfied with him than if he had an intellect far beyond mine, and brilliant gifts without that trustworthiness'. Charlotte's startling response to this was that ‘such a character would be far less amusing and interesting than a more impulsive and fickle one; it might be dull!' The conversation, which had begun so seriously, ended in general laughter when Katie observed that such a character would at least enable one to ‘do the fickleness required one's self, which would be a relief sometimes'.
¹⁶

By the time Charlotte left Plymouth Grove, her premarital nerves were ‘greatly comforted' and both Mrs Gaskell and Katie Winkworth were convinced that Charlotte would be ‘much more really happy' with Mr Nicholls, ‘than with one who might have made her more in love'. It was Katie, however, who proved the more perceptive when she suggested, ‘But I
guess
the true love was Paul Emanuel after all, and is dead; but I don't know, and don't think Lily [Mrs Gaskell] knows …'
¹⁷

From Manchester, Charlotte travelled to Hunsworth to stay with Joe and Amelia Taylor. This visit, too, was curtailed to a mere four days, during which Charlotte, perhaps made more maternal by her approaching marriage, developed a strong attachment to little ‘Tim', who was now two and a half years old. Though Charlotte felt herself ‘very decent' in health, Amelia
declared the opposite: certainly ‘Tim' must have thought her old-looking for she called her ‘grandmamma', a nickname which Charlotte affectionately adopted in her later correspondence.
¹⁸
On Monday, 8 May, Charlotte transferred to Brookroyd: it was almost exactly a year since her last visit and, though no one knew it, it was to be her last. Any linGéring awkwardnesses were soon swept away and Ellen was pressed into service helping Charlotte to choose her trousseau in Leeds and Halifax – the bride herself stipulated nothing expensive or extensive and that the bonnets and dresses should all be capable of being ‘turned to decent use and worn after the wedding-day'. The wedding-dress itself proved to be contentious. All Charlotte's friends insisted she should wear white ‘which I told you I would not wear' she told Mrs Gaskell; they forced her to try white on, persuaded her

that nothing had ever suited me so well – and white I had to buy and did buy to my own amazement – but I took care to get it in cheap material – there were some insinuations about silk <-> tulle and I don't know what – but I stuck convulsively to muslin – plain book muslin with a tuck or two. Also the white veil – I took care should be a matter of 5s being simply of tulle with little tucks. If I must make a fool of myself – it shall be on an economical plan.
¹⁹

Charlotte returned to Haworth on the evening of 13 May to find that arrangements for the wedding were gathering pace. Not surprisingly, George de Renzy the unfortunate curate who had stepped into Mr Nicholls' shoes and was now surplus to requirements, was feeling aggrieved. Though ‘perfectly smooth and fair-spoken' to Patrick, he wrote unpleasantly to Mr Nicholls and had the ‘deplorable weakness to go and pour out acrimonious complaints to John Brown, the National School-master and other subordinates'. His conduct roused Charlotte's bile: ‘This only exposes himself to disrespectful comment from those exalted personages', she told Ellen. ‘For his own and his office-sake I wish he would be quiet.' He was also making difficulties about the date of his departure, casting all the wedding plans into disarray. ‘Mr de R's whole aim is to throw Papa into the dilemma of being without a curate for some weeks', Charlotte wrote angrily to Ellen,

Papa has every legal right to frustrate this at once by telling him he must stay till his quarter is up – but this is just the harsh decided sort of measure which it goes against Papa's nature to adopt and which I can not and will not urge upon him
while he is in delicate health. I feel compelled to throw the burden of the contest upon Mr Nicholls who is younger – more pugnacious and can bear it better. The worst of it is Mr N. has not Papa's rights to speak and act or he would do it to purpose –
²⁰

Patrick had already conceded that his curate should take three weeks of paid leave but Mr de Renzy was now ‘moving heaven & earth to get a fortnight more – on pretence of wanting a holiday', Charlotte exploded. It was not until 16 June that matters were finally settled. Charlotte had wanted the wedding deferred till the second week in July, but Patrick had given way and Mr de Renzy had obtained his holiday: he would leave on 25 June. ‘This gives rise to much trouble and many difficulties, as you may imagine – and Papa's whole anxiety now is to get the business over – Mr Nicholls – with his usual trustworthiness – takes all the trouble of providing substitutes on his own shoulders.'
²¹

Charlotte's annoyance at Mr de Renzy's behaviour was symptomatic of her nerves before the wedding. While she had been away, her future husband had been ill with a recurrence of his rheumatic complaint, a fact she seems to have learnt from Mr Grant rather than Arthur himself. Charlotte was thrown into a panic. Was she about to marry a chronic invalid? ‘I fear – I fear –', she confessed to Ellen, ‘but however I mean to stand by him now whether in weal or woe'. She then revealed – for the first time – that his lack of money had not been Patrick's sole objection to Mr Nicholls: his liability to rheumatic pain had also been ‘one of the strong arguments used against the marriage'. One wonders what the other ‘strong arguments' were and whether one of them was the danger of pregnancy and childbirth to a woman of delicate health in her late thirties.
²²
Though not a subject openly discussed at this period, by the very nature of his job Patrick could not be unaware of the risks.

The reports of Mr Nicholls' illness proved groundless. He came to visit on Monday, 22 May and stayed till the following Saturday. ‘At first I was thoroughly frightened by his look … It was wasted and strange, and his whole manner nervous', Charlotte told Ellen. ‘My worst apprehensions – I thought were in the way of being realized.' When she questioned him, however, she discovered that he had no rheumatic pains and no complaint at all to which he could give a name; he had been to see Mr Teale, who had told him there was nothing whatsoever wrong with him except an overwrought mind.

He was going to die, however, or something like it. I took heart on hearing this – which may seem paradoxical – but you know – dear Nell – when people are really going to die – they dont come a distance of some fifty miles to tell you so … In short I soon discovered that my business was – instead of sympathizing – to rate him soundly. He had wholesome treatment while he was at Haworth – and went away singularly better.

That Charlotte could now joke about dying, however sardonically, was singular proof of the change in her which Mr Nicholls' devotion had wrought. She was already taking pleasure in affectionate chiding, exclaiming at his impatience in wishing to be married. ‘There is not a female child above the age of eight but might rebuke him for the spoilt petulance of his wilful nonsense.'
²³

It was during this visit that Charlotte's marriage settlement was drawn up and signed.
²⁴
This was standard practice in the days before the Married Women's Property Act, because a woman could not own anything in her own right: all her money and estate, whether earned or inherited before or after her marriage, automatically became her husband's property. Fathers wealthy enough to do so would tie up a sum of money in trust for the sole benefit of the daughter and, after her death, her children: this ensured that the daughter would receive an income in the event of widowhood and, if she was marrying a widower with children, or died and her widower remarried, only her own children would benefit from the trust.

Charlotte's marriage settlement was unusual in two respects. Firstly, the money involved, £1,678 9s. 9d., was entirely her own, the sum of her earnings from her writings and what was left of her railway investments, so that she had the entire disposal of it at her command; and secondly, a clause in the settlement determined that, if Charlotte died childless before her husband, the entire value of the trust would revert not to Arthur Nicholls but to Patrick Brontë. Clearly, then, the object of the settlement was to ensure that Mr Nicholls could not touch any of Charlotte's money. During her lifetime the income would be paid out to her ‘for her sole and separate use' by Joe Taylor, who was appointed the sole trustee of the fund; if she was widowed, the trust ended and Charlotte regained sole control of the capital and its income. If she died first, it would remain in trust for her children until they came of age, when the capital would be divided among them.
²⁵

Several factors may account for Charlotte's decision to exclude Mr Nicholls from all control over her money. It was common sense to ensure
that, if she was left a widow, her life savings should not be swallowed up in Mr Nicholls' estate and possibly revert to Irish relations, leaving her or her children destitute. Given their respective ages (she was thirty-eight, he was thirty-five), state of health and the risks of childbearing, however, it was much more likely that Charlotte would die, childless, before her husband. As he was comparatively young and still had his career before him, it again made sense that it should be Patrick who would benefit from the money. Had Charlotte not married, the money would inevitably have been his; she was determined that he would not lose financially by the marriage and this was a way of ensuring that he did not do so. It is a measure of Mr Nicholls' love for Charlotte and his determination to ‘offer support and consolation' to Patrick's ‘declining age' that he willingly acquiesced in an arrangement which would leave him always dependent solely on his meagre curate's income.
²⁶