Brontës (38 page)

She never seemed to me the unattractive little person others designated her, but certainly she was at this time anything but
pretty
; even her good points were lost. Her naturally beautiful hair of soft silky brown being then dry and frizzy-looking, screwed up in tight little curls, showing features that were all the plainer from her exceeding thinness and want of complexion, she looked ‘dried in.' A dark, rusty green stuff dress of old-fashioned make detracted still more from her appearance
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The girls found her short-sightedness a particular source of amusement: ‘When a book was given her she dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched it, and when she was told to hold her head up, up went the book after it, still close to her nose, so that it was not possible to help laughing.' Though the girls urged her to join in the more active outdoor games, it was soon discovered that she could not see the ball and she was unceremoniously ‘put out' again and left to her own devices. In any case, Charlotte was happier sitting or standing under the trees in the playground.

She endeavoured to explain this, pointing out the shadows, the peeps of sky, etc. We understood but little of it. She said that at Cowan Bridge she used to stand in the burn, on a stone, to watch the water flow by. I told her she should have gone fishing; she said she never wanted.
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The energetic and boisterous Mary Taylor found Charlotte physically feeble in everything. Not only did she not play games but she refused to eat any animal food, remembering the horrors of the meat at Cowan Bridge. Her foibles were accepted at Roe Head, however, and something was always specially provided for her to eat. Gradually, as she grew more confident and happy, she was persuaded to try gravy with her vegetables and was eventually won round to the normal school diet.
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If her fellow pupils were swift to notice Charlotte's oddities, they were soon forced to recognize her unusually brilliant mind. At first the general impression, typified by Mary Taylor's comments, was remarkably similar to her entry in the register of the Clergy Daughters' School seven years before: ‘We thought her very ignorant, for she had never learnt grammar at all, and
very little geography.' It was soon realized that her knowledge and abilities were of quite a different sort.

She would confound us by knowing things that were out of our range altogether. She was acquainted with most of the short pieces of poetry that we had to learn by heart: would tell us the authors, the poems they were taken from, and sometimes repeat a page or two, and tell us the plot… She used to draw much better, and more quickly, than anything we had seen before, and knew much about celebrated pictures and painters. Whenever an opportunity offered of examining a picture or cut of any kind, she went over it piecemeal, with her eyes close to the paper, looking so long that we used to ask her ‘what she saw in it'. She could always see plenty, and explained it very well. She made poetry and drawing at least exceedingly interesting to me; and then I got the habit, which I have yet, of referring mentally to her opinion on all matters of that kind …
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Charlotte's evident mental superiority and her diffident way of sharing her knowledge, rather than flaunting it, won her the respect and affection of her fellow pupils; her peculiarities were soon forgotten and she was accepted as one of the girls. Within a few weeks of arriving at the school, she had settled in happily.

The system of education at the school was almost entirely class-based, which meant that new pupils were at first taught individually until they were of the required standard. Even when they were in their classes, the girls could proceed at their own pace, reciting their lessons to Miss Wooler as and when they had learnt them, rather than waiting for the whole class to complete the allotted task. The lessons were the standard ones of the day: geography, history, English grammar and French, with a leavening of music and drawing. Richmal Mangnall's
Historical and Miscellaneous Questions
was the staple diet, passages being learnt off by heart and recited back to the teacher. Charlotte arrived at Roe Head with her own copy of this and of Tocquot's
New and Easy Guide to the Pronunciation and Spelling of French
, both of which she inscribed with her name and the first date of term. Each book is heavily annotated and scribbled in: the Mangnall has most of its annotations in the section on the history of ancient Greece where names, dates and further information have been added. On the endpapers and inside the back cover of the Tocquot, Charlotte scribbled lists of Shakespearian characters and Latin versions of place names. During her eighteen months at the school she acquired further books, reflecting her
grammatical weakness: Pinnock's
Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language
and Lindley Murray's
English Grammar
.
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Charlotte made such rapid progress in her studies that by the end of her first half year she had risen to the top of her class, carrying off three prizes and being awarded the silver medal for achievement, suitably inscribed ‘Emulation' on one side and ‘Rewarded' on the other. She was never to lose her place at the top of the class and so was awarded the medal at the end of each of the three terms she spent at Roe Head. At the end of her second term she also won the school French prize, a copy of the New Testament in French inscribed on the fly leaf ‘French Prize adjudged to Miss Bronte & presented with the Miss Woolers' kind love. Roe Head Decr 14th 1831'.
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In the ‘accomplishments' Charlotte also made advances. Like all the young Brontës she had always loved drawing and from 1828 onwards she had spent much time and effort in producing increasingly detailed and skilful pencil drawings and watercolours. By 1830 she was capable of exquisite and delicate paintings, a simple spray of wild roses taken from nature, a prettified copy of a portrait of her mother or a highly coloured copy of J. H. Fuseli's illustrations to John Milton.
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Her lessons with John Bradley had given her a head start over her fellow pupils, but at Roe Head she was forced to go back to basics. Among her extant pieces are a whole series of pencil studies of mouths, noses, eyes, ears and profiles produced in the first two months of school. She then progressed to pencil head-and-shoulder portraits, reproducing Raphael-style cartoons which appeared in copy-books and the
Penny Magazine
at the time: at least two of these reminded her of her school-fellows, for one was labelled ‘Amelia Walker' and another ‘Susan Ledgard'. Thereafter, it was pencil copies of botanical illustrations and landscapes, drawings from life not being encouraged except for the single instance of a drawing of Roe Head.
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Though the course did not foster originality, it gave a sound basis for future artistic effort.

Charlotte's instinctive love of and ear for music were quietly discouraged, not because she was without talent, but because she could not see her notes without stooping so dreadfully that it was feared she might permanently affect her posture.
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What Charlotte had initially lacked in formal education, she more than made up for by her application to study. She had a set purpose in mind and she deeply felt the responsibility that rested on her: she was an object of expense to those at home and she must use every opportunity to attain the knowledge which would fit her for her chosen path of being a governess.
Ellen Nussey, who was not inclined to intellectual interests, felt that Charlotte had almost too much opportunity for her conscientious diligence. Once the set lessons for the day had been accomplished, the girls were free to do as they liked. Charlotte was so quick to learn that she would have had ample time for recreation, but she chose instead to spend her free hours in extra lessons.

She liked the stated task to be over, that she might be free to pursue her self-appointed ones … When her companions were merry round the fire, or otherwise enjoying themselves during the twilight, which was always a precious time of relaxation, she would be kneeling close to the window busy with her studies, and this would last so long that she was accused of seeing in the dark
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Self-improvement was Charlotte's goal, not only in the formal attainments but in cultivating her tastes.

She always said there was enough of hard practicality and
useful
knowledge forced on us by necessity, and that the thing most needed was to soften and refine our minds. She picked up every scrap of information concerning painting, sculpture, poetry, music, etc., as if it were gold.
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At Roe Head Charlotte was free to indulge her passion for poetry and the visual arts, though there was no time to spare for her other obsession, the fictional world of Glasstown. The fourteen-year-old Charlotte saw no reason to hide or be ashamed of her family's absorption in the imaginary worlds of their own creation. She told her school friends all about the monthly issues of the ‘Young Men's Magazine' and how they were written in characters to make them look as if they had been printed. She even told the girls a story out of one of them and promised to show the magazines to Mary Taylor – a promise she afterwards retracted and could never be induced to fulfil.
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Charlotte did find some outlet for her highly active imagination, however, and in the process won herself a reputation as a storyteller. On one occasion, she thrilled her audience with the terrifying story of the wanderings of a sleepwalker:

She brought together all the horrors her imagination could create, from surging seas, raging breakers, towering castle walls, high precipices, invisible chasms and
dangers. Having wrought these materials to the highest pitch of effect, she brought out, in almost cloud-height, her somnambulist, walking on shaking turrets, – all told in a voice that conveyed more than words alone can express.

So powerful was the effect she created that one girl, who had recently been ill, was reduced to shivering terror; help had to be called for and Charlotte felt so guilty that she refused to tell her frightening stories ever again. After some time and by popular demand, however, she was induced to revert to telling stories after hours in the dormitory – until she and all her listeners were fined by Miss Catherine Wooler for ‘late talking'.
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Charlotte had found a role at the school which enabled the otherwise shy and retiring girl to blossom. When it was decided to enact a ‘coronation performance' one half-day holiday, Charlotte naturally assumed the organizational role she had always held at home. She drew up the programme, arranged the titles of the performers and wrote both the invitations and the central speech for the coronation:

Powerful Queen! accept this crown, the symbol of dominion, from the hands of your faithful and affectionate subjects! And if their earnest and united wishes have any efficacy, you will long be permitted to reign over this peaceful, though circumscribed, empire.
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In such a role Charlotte was in her element: she had, after all, been writing similar speeches for many years and the only difference now was that she had a wider audience than simply her devoted family.

Living too far away to travel home, except for the summer and Christmas holidays, Charlotte was fortunate in that her school-fellows often invited her to their houses for the weekend or short holidays. As most of them were daughters of wealthy manufacturers, their houses were much grander than Haworth Parsonage. The Nusseys lived at The Rydings, an elegant, castellated old house set in landscaped grounds in Birstall. Ellen's father, John Nussey, had been a wealthy cloth manufacturer, with mills at Birstall Smithies; he had died in 1826 but the business had been continued by his sons. Ellen was the youngest of twelve children: there was a wide disparity in their ages, the oldest being more than twenty years older than Ellen. Life at The Rydings was genteel but busy with all the comings and goings of the vast circle of Nussey friends and relations, who spent their time in paying social visits to one another.
Charlotte was welcomed with friendly courtesy and unobtrusive kindness.
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By contrast, Mary Taylor's family were boisterous and did not stand on ceremony. Mary and her sister, Martha, who was also at Roe Head, were the fourth and fifth of six children, but they were all very close in age and consequently the household was dominated by the young people. Their father, Joshua Taylor, was also a manufacturer and a banker but in the same year that Ellen's father died he had gone bankrupt as a result of the failure of his own bank in London.
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He spent many years paying back his debts and trying to restore the fortunes of his business. Like his children, he was an ardent Radical and his vociferously expressed beliefs were the absolute antithesis of Charlotte's High Tory politics. At the Red House, their gracious but unusually brick-built home in Gomersal, Charlotte was drawn into political argument and a defence of her hero the Duke of Wellington:

We used to be furious politicians, as one could hardly help being in 1832. She knew the names of the two Ministries; the one that resigned, and the one that succeeded and passed the Reform Bill. She worshipped the Duke of Wellington, but said that Sir Robert Peel was not to be trusted; he did not act from principle, like the rest, but from expediency. I, being of the furious Radical party, told her, ‘How could any of them trust one another? they were all of them rascals!' Then she would launch out into praises of the Duke of Wellington, referring to his actions; which I could not contradict, as I knew nothing about him. She said she had taken interest in politics ever since she was five years old. She did not get her opinions from her father – that is, not directly – but from the papers, etc., he preferred … At our house she had just as little chance of a patient hearing, [as at school] for though not schoolgirlish we were more intolerant. We had a rage for practicality, and laughed all poetry to scorn. Neither she nor we had any idea but that our opinions were the opinions of all the
sensible
people in the world, and we used to astonish each other at every sentence.
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