Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (470 page)

She wrote thus to Emily: —

“Dec.1st, 1843.

“This is Sunday morning.  They are at their idolatrous ‘messe,’ and I am here, that is in the Refectoire.  I should like uncommonly to be in the dining-room at home, or in the kitchen, or in the back kitchen.  I should like even to be cutting up the hash, with the clerk and some register people at the other table, and you standing by, watching that I put enough flour, not too much pepper, and, above all, that I save the best pieces of the leg of mutton for Tiger and Keeper, the first of which personages would be jumping about the dish and carving-knife, and the latter standing like a devouring flame on the kitchen-floor.  To complete the picture, Tabby blowing the fire, in order to boil the potatoes to a sort of vegetable glue!  How divine are these recollections to me at this moment!  Yet I have no thought of coming home just now.  I lack a real pretext for doing so; it is true this place is dismal to me, but I cannot go home without a fixed prospect when I get there; and this prospect must not be a situation; that would be jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. 
You
call yourself idle! absurd, absurd! . . . Is papa well?  Are you well? and Tabby?  You ask about Queen Victoria’s visit to Brussels.  I saw her for an instant flashing through the Rue Royale in a carriage and six, surrounded by soldiers.  She was laughing and talking very gaily.  She looked a little stout, vivacious lady, very plainly dressed, not much dignity or pretension about her.  The Belgians liked her very well on the whole.  They said she enlivened the sombre court of King Leopold, which is usually as gloomy as a conventicle.  Write to me again soon.  Tell me whether papa really wants me very much to come home, and whether you do likewise.  I have an idea that I should be of no use there — a sort of aged person upon the parish.  I pray, with heart and soul, that all may continue well at Haworth; above all in our grey half-inhabited house.  God bless the walls thereof!  Safety, health, happiness, and prosperity to you, papa, and Tabby.  Amen.

“C. B.”

Towards the end of this year (1843) various reasons conspired with the causes of anxiety which have been mentioned, to make her feel that her presence was absolutely and imperatively required at home, while she had acquired all that she proposed to herself in coming to Brussels the second time; and was, moreover, no longer regarded with the former kindliness of feeling by Madame Héger.  In consequence of this state of things, working down with sharp edge into a sensitive mind, she suddenly announced to that lady her immediate intention of returning to England.  Both M. and Madame Héger agreed that it would be for the best, when they learnt only that part of the case which she could reveal to them — namely, Mr. Brontë’s increasing blindness.  But as the inevitable moment of separation from people and places, among which she had spent so many happy hours, drew near, her spirits gave way; she had the natural presentiment that she saw them all for the last time, and she received but a dead kind of comfort from being reminded by her friends that Brussels and Haworth were not so very far apart; that access from one place to the other was not so difficult or impracticable as her tears would seem to predicate; nay, there was some talk of one of Madame Héger’s daughters being sent to her as a pupil, if she fulfilled her intention of trying to begin a school.  To facilitate her success in this plan, should she ever engage in it, M. Héger gave her a kind of diploma, dated from, and sealed with the seal of the Athénée Royal de Bruxelles, certifying that she was perfectly capable of teaching the French language, having well studied the grammar and composition thereof, and, moreover, having prepared herself for teaching by studying and practising the best methods of instruction.  This certificate is dated December 29th 1843, and on the 2nd of January, 1844, she arrived at Haworth.

On the 23rd of the month she writes as follows: —

“Every one asks me what I am going to do, now that I am returned home; and every one seems to expect that I should immediately commence a school.  In truth, it is what I should wish to do.  I desire it above all things.  I have sufficient money for the undertaking, and I hope now sufficient qualifications to give me a fair chance of success; yet I cannot yet permit myself to enter upon life — to touch the object which seems now within my reach, and which I have been so long straining to attain.  You will ask me why?  It is on papa’s account; he is now, as you know, getting old, and it grieves me to tell you that he is losing his sight.  I have felt for some months that I ought not to be away from him; and I feel now that it would be too selfish to leave him (at least, as long as Branwell and Anne are absent), in order to pursue selfish interests of my own.  With the help of God, I will try to deny myself in this matter, and to wait.

“I suffered much before I left Brussels.  I think, however long I live, I shall not forget what the parting with M. Héger cost me.  It grieved me so much to grieve him who has been so true, kind, and disinterested a friend.  At parting he gave me a kind of diploma certifying my abilities as a teacher, sealed with the seal of the Athénée Royal, of which he is professor.  I was surprised also at the degree of regret expressed by my Belgian pupils, when they knew I was going to leave.  I did not think it had been in their phlegmatic nature . . . I do not know whether you feel as I do, but there are times now when it appears to me as if all my ideas and feelings, except a few friendships and affections, are changed from what they used to be; something in me, which used to be enthusiasm, is tamed down and broken.  I have fewer illusions; what I wish for now is active exertion — a stake in life.  Haworth seems such a lonely, quiet spot, buried away from the world.  I no longer regard myself as young — indeed, I shall soon be twenty-eight; and it seems as if I ought to be working and braving the rough realities of the world, as other people do.  It is, however, my duty to restrain this feeling at present, and I will endeavour to do so.”

Of course her absent sister and brother obtained a holiday to welcome her return home, and in a few weeks she was spared to pay a visit to her friend at B.  But she was far from well or strong, and the short journey of fourteen miles seems to have fatigued her greatly.

Soon after she came back to Haworth, in a letter to one of the household in which she had been staying, there occurs this passage: — “Our poor little cat has been ill two days, and is just dead.  It is piteous to see even an animal lying lifeless.  Emily is sorry.”  These few words relate to points in the characters of the two sisters, which I must dwell upon a little.  Charlotte was more than commonly tender in her treatment of all dumb creatures, and they, with that fine instinct so often noticed, were invariably attracted towards her.  The deep and exaggerated consciousness of her personal defects — the constitutional absence of hope, which made her slow to trust in human affection, and, consequently, slow to respond to any manifestation of it — made her manner shy and constrained to men and women, and even to children.  We have seen something of this trembling distrust of her own capability of inspiring affection, in the grateful surprise she expresses at the regret felt by her Belgian pupils at her departure.  But not merely were her actions kind, her words and tones were ever gentle and caressing, towards animals: and she quickly noticed the least want of care or tenderness on the part of others towards any poor brute creature.  The readers of “Shirley” may remember that it is one of the tests which the heroine applies to her lover.

“Do you know what soothsayers I would consult?” . . . “The little Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in my wainscot; the bird in frost and snow that pecks at my window for a crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits beside my knee.  I know somebody to whose knee the black cat loves to climb, against whose shoulder and cheek it likes to purr.  The old dog always comes out of his kennel and wags his tail, and whines affectionately when somebody passes.”  [For “somebody” and “he,” read “Charlotte Brontë” and “she.”]  “He quietly strokes the cat, and lets her sit while he conveniently can; and when he must disturb her by rising, he puts her softly down, and never flings her from him roughly: he always whistles to the dog, and gives him a caress.”

The feeling, which in Charlotte partook of something of the nature of an affection, was, with Emily, more of a passion.  Some one speaking of her to me, in a careless kind of strength of expression, said, “she never showed regard to any human creature; all her love was reserved for animals.”  The helplessness of an animal was its passport to Charlotte’s heart; the fierce, wild, intractability of its nature was what often recommended it to Emily.  Speaking of her dead sister, the former told me that from her many traits in Shirley’s character were taken; her way of sitting on the rug reading, with her arm round her rough bull-dog’s neck; her calling to a strange dog, running past, with hanging head and lolling tongue, to give it a merciful draught of water, its maddened snap at her, her nobly stern presence of mind, going right into the kitchen, and taking up one of Tabby’s red-hot Italian irons to sear the bitten place, and telling no one, till the danger was well-nigh over, for fear of the terrors that might beset their weaker minds.  All this, looked upon as a well-invented fiction in “Shirley,” was written down by Charlotte with streaming eyes; it was the literal true account of what Emily had done.  The same tawny bull-dog (with his “strangled whistle”), called “Tartar” in “Shirley,” was “Keeper” in Haworth parsonage; a gift to Emily.  With the gift came a warning.  Keeper was faithful to the depths of his nature as long as he was with friends; but he who struck him with a stick or whip, roused the relentless nature of the brute, who flew at his throat forthwith, and held him there till one or the other was at the point of death.  Now Keeper’s household fault was this.  He loved to steal upstairs, and stretch his square, tawny limbs, on the comfortable beds, covered over with delicate white counterpanes.  But the cleanliness of the parsonage arrangements was perfect; and this habit of Keeper’s was so objectionable, that Emily, in reply to Tabby’s remonstrances, declared that, if he was found again transgressing, she herself, in defiance of warning and his well-known ferocity of nature, would beat him so severely that he would never offend again.  In the gathering dusk of an autumn evening, Tabby came, half-triumphantly, half-tremblingly, but in great wrath, to tell Emily that Keeper was lying on the best bed, in drowsy voluptuousness.  Charlotte saw Emily’s whitening face, and set mouth, but dared not speak to interfere; no one dared when Emily’s eyes glowed in that manner out of the paleness of her face, and when her lips were so compressed into stone.  She went upstairs, and Tabby and Charlotte stood in the gloomy passage below, full of the dark shadows of coming night.  Down-stairs came Emily, dragging after her the unwilling Keeper, his hind legs set in a heavy attitude of resistance, held by the “scuft of his neck,” but growling low and savagely all the time.  The watchers would fain have spoken, but durst not, for fear of taking off Emily’s attention, and causing her to avert her head for a moment from the enraged brute.  She let him go, planted in a dark corner at the bottom of the stairs; no time was there to fetch stick or rod, for fear of the strangling clutch at her throat — her bare clenched fist struck against his red fierce eyes, before he had time to make his spring, and, in the language of the turf, she “punished him” till his eyes were swelled up, and the half-blind, stupified beast was led to his accustomed lair, to have his swollen head fomented and cared for by the very Emily herself.  The generous dog owed her no grudge; he loved her dearly ever after; he walked first among the mourners to her funeral; he slept moaning for nights at the door of her empty room, and never, so to speak, rejoiced, dog fashion, after her death.  He, in his turn, was mourned over by the surviving sister.  Let us somehow hope, in half Red Indian creed, that he follows Emily now; and, when he rests, sleeps on some soft white bed of dreams, unpunished when he awakens to the life of the land of shadows.

Now we can understand the force of the words, “Our poor little cat is dead.  Emily is sorry.”

CHAPTER XIII

The moors were a great resource this spring; Emily and Charlotte walked out on them perpetually, “to the great damage of our shoes, but I hope, to the benefit of our health.”  The old plan of school-keeping was often discussed in these rambles; but in-doors they set with vigour to shirt-making for the absent Branwell, and pondered in silence over their past and future life.  At last they came to a determination.

“I have seriously entered into the enterprise of keeping a school — or rather, taking a limited number of pupils at home.  That is, I have begun in good earnest to seek for pupils.  I wrote to Mrs. — - ” (the lady with whom she had lived as governess, just before going to Brussels), “not asking her for her daughter — I cannot do that — but informing her of my intention.  I received an answer from Mr. — - expressive of, I believe, sincere regret that I had not informed them a month sooner, in which case, he said, they would gladly have sent me their own daughter, and also Colonel S.’s, but that now both were promised to Miss C.  I was partly disappointed by this answer, and partly gratified; indeed, I derived quite an impulse of encouragement from the warm assurance that if I had but applied a little sooner they would certainly have sent me their daughter.  I own I had misgivings that nobody would be willing to send a child for education to Haworth.  These misgivings are partly done away with.  I have written also to Mrs. B., and have enclosed the diploma which M. Héger gave me before I left Brussels.  I have not yet received her answer, but I wait for it with some anxiety.  I do not expect that she will send me any of her children, but if she would, I dare say she could recommend me other pupils.  Unfortunately, she knows us only very slightly.  As soon as I can get an assurance of only
one
pupil, I will have cards of terms printed, and will commence the repairs necessary in the house.  I wish all that to be done before winter.  I think of fixing the board and English education at 25
l
. per annum.”

Again, at a later date, July 24th, in the same year, she writes: —

“I am driving on with my small matter as well as I can.  I have written to all the friends on whom I have the slightest claim, and to some on whom I have no claim; Mrs. B., for example.  On her, also, I have actually made bold to call.  She was exceedingly polite; regretted that her children were already at school at Liverpool; thought the undertaking a most praiseworthy one, but feared I should have some difficulty in making it succeed on account of the
situation
.  Such is the answer I receive from almost every one.  I tell them the
retired situation
is, in some points of view, an advantage; that were it in the midst of a large town I could not pretend to take pupils on terms so moderate (Mrs. B. remarked that she thought the terms very moderate), but that, as it is, not having house-rent to pay, we can offer the same privileges of education that are to be had in expensive seminaries, at little more than half their price; and as our number must be limited, we can devote a large share of time and pains to each pupil.  Thank you for the very pretty little purse you have sent me.  I make to you a curious return in the shape of half a dozen cards of terms.  Make such use of them as your judgment shall dictate.  You will see that I have fixed the sum at 35
l
., which I think is the just medium, considering advantages and disadvantages.”

This was written in July; August, September, and October passed away, and no pupils were to be heard of.  Day after day, there was a little hope felt by the sisters until the post came in.  But Haworth village was wild and lonely, and the Brontës but little known, owing to their want of connections.  Charlotte writes on the subject, in the early winter months, to this effect —

“I, Emily, and Anne, are truly obliged to you for the efforts you have made in our behalf; and if you have not been successful, you are only like ourselves.  Every one wishes us well; but there are no pupils to be had.  We have no present intention, however, of breaking our hearts on the subject, still less of feeling mortified at defeat.  The effort must be beneficial, whatever the result may be, because it teaches us experience, and an additional knowledge of this world.  I send you two more circulars.”

A month later, she says: —

“We have made no alterations yet in our house.  It would be folly to do so, while there is so little likelihood of our ever getting pupils.  I fear you are giving yourself too much trouble on our account.  Depend upon it, if you were to persuade a mamma to bring her child to Haworth, the aspect of the place would frighten her, and she would probably take the dear girl back with her, instanter.  We are glad that we have made the attempt, and we will not be cast down because it has not succeeded.”

There were, probably, growing up in each sister’s heart, secret unacknowledged feelings of relief, that their plan had not succeeded.  Yes! a dull sense of relief that their cherished project had been tried and had failed.  For that house, which was to be regarded as an occasional home for their brother, could hardly be a fitting residence for the children of strangers.  They had, in all likelihood, become silently aware that his habits were such as to render his society at times most undesirable.  Possibly, too, they had, by this time, heard distressing rumours concerning the cause of that remorse and agony of mind, which at times made him restless and unnaturally merry, at times rendered him moody and irritable.

In January, 1845, Charlotte says: — “Branwell has been quieter and less irritable, on the whole, this time than he was in summer.  Anne is, as usual, always good, mild, and patient.”  The deep-seated pain which he was to occasion to his relations had now taken a decided form, and pressed heavily on Charlotte’s health and spirits.  Early in this year, she went to H. to bid good-bye to her dear friend “Mary,” who was leaving England for Australia.

Branwell, I have mentioned, had obtained the situation of a private tutor.  Anne was also engaged as governess in the same family, and was thus a miserable witness to her brother’s deterioration of character at this period.  Of the causes of this deterioration I cannot speak; but the consequences were these.  He went home for his holidays reluctantly, stayed there as short a time as possible, perplexing and distressing them all by his extraordinary conduct — at one time in the highest spirits, at another, in the deepest depression — accusing himself of blackest guilt and treachery, without specifying what they were; and altogether evincing an irritability of disposition bordering on insanity.

Charlotte and Emily suffered acutely from his mysterious behaviour.  He expressed himself more than satisfied with his situation; he was remaining in it for a longer time than he had ever done in any kind of employment before; so that for some time they could not conjecture that anything there made him so wilful, and restless, and full of both levity and misery.  But a sense of something wrong connected with him, sickened and oppressed them.  They began to lose all hope in his future career.  He was no longer the family pride; an indistinct dread, caused partly by his own conduct, partly by expressions of agonising suspicion in Anne’s letters home, was creeping over their minds that he might turn out their deep disgrace.  But, I believe, they shrank from any attempt to define their fears, and spoke of him to each other as little as possible.  They could not help but think, and mourn, and wonder.

“Feb. 20th, 1845.

“I spent a week at H., not very pleasantly; headache, sickliness, and flatness of spirits, made me a poor companion, a sad drag on the vivacious and loquacious gaiety of all the other inmates of the house.  I never was fortunate enough to be able to rally, for as much as a single hour, while I was there.  I am sure all, with the exception perhaps of Mary, were very glad when I took my departure.  I begin to perceive that I have too little life in me, now-a-days, to be fit company for any except very quiet people.  Is it age, or what else, that changes me so?”

Alas! she hardly needed to have asked this question.  How could she be otherwise than “flat-spirited,” “a poor companion,” and a “sad drag” on the gaiety of those who were light-hearted and happy!  Her honest plan for earning her own livelihood had fallen away, crumbled to ashes; after all her preparations, not a pupil had offered herself; and, instead of being sorry that this wish of many years could not be realised, she had reason to be glad.  Her poor father, nearly sightless, depended upon her cares in his blind helplessness; but this was a sacred pious charge, the duties of which she was blessed in fulfilling.  The black gloom hung over what had once been the brightest hope of the family — over Branwell, and the mystery in which his wayward conduct was enveloped.  Somehow and sometime, he would have to turn to his home as a hiding place for shame; such was the sad foreboding of his sisters.  Then how could she be cheerful, when she was losing her dear and noble “Mary,” for such a length of time and distance of space that her heart might well prophesy that it was “for ever”?  Long before, she had written of Mary T., that she “was full of feelings noble, warm, generous, devoted, and profound.  God bless her!  I never hope to see in this world a character more truly noble.  She would die willingly for one she loved.  Her intellect and attainments are of the very highest standard.”  And this was the friend whom she was to lose!  Hear that friend’s account of their final interview: —

“When I last saw Charlotte (Jan. 1845), she told me she had quite decided to stay at home.  She owned she did not like it.  Her health was weak.  She said she should like any change at first, as she had liked Brussels at first, and she thought that there must be some possibility for some people of having a life of more variety and more communion with human kind, but she saw none for her.  I told her very warmly, that she ought not to stay at home; that to spend the next five years at home, in solitude and weak health, would ruin her; that she would never recover it.  Such a dark shadow came over her face when I said, ‘Think of what you’ll be five years hence!’ that I stopped, and said, ‘Don’t cry, Charlotte!’  She did not cry, but went on walking up and down the room, and said in a little while, ‘But I intend to stay, Polly.’”

A few weeks after she parted from Mary, she gives this account of her days at Haworth.

“March 24th, 1845.

“I can hardly tell you how time gets on at Haworth.  There is no event whatever to mark its progress.  One day resembles another; and all have heavy, lifeless physiognomies.  Sunday, baking-day, and Saturday, are the only ones that have any distinctive mark.  Meantime, life wears away.  I shall soon be thirty; and I have done nothing yet.  Sometimes I get melancholy at the prospect before and behind me.  Yet it is wrong and foolish to repine.  Undoubtedly, my duty directs me to stay at home for the present.  There was a time when Haworth was a very pleasant place to me; it is not so now.  I feel as if we were all buried here.  I long to travel; to work; to live a life of action.  Excuse me, dear, for troubling you with my fruitless wishes.  I will put by the rest, and not trouble you with them.  You must write to me.  If you knew how welcome your letters are, you would write very often.  Your letters, and the French newspapers, are the only messengers that come to me from the outer world beyond our moors; and very welcome messengers they are.”

One of her daily employments was to read to her father, and it required a little gentle diplomacy on her part to effect this duty; for there were times when the offer of another to do what he had been so long accustomed to do for himself, only reminded him too painfully of the deprivation under which he was suffering.  And, in secret, she, too, dreaded a similar loss for herself.  Long-continued ill health, a deranged condition of the liver, her close application to minute drawing and writing in her younger days, her now habitual sleeplessness at nights, the many bitter noiseless tears she had shed over Branwell’s mysterious and distressing conduct — all these causes were telling on her poor eyes; and about this time she thus writes to M. Héger: —

“Il n’y a rien que je crains comme le désoeuvrement, l’inertie, la léthargie des facultés.  Quand le corps est paresseux l’esprit souffre cruellement; je ne connaîtrais pas cette léthargie, si je pouvais écrire.  Autrefois je passais des journées, des semaines, des mois entiers à écrire, et pas tout-à-fait sans fruit, puisque Southey et Coleridge, deux de nos meilleurs auteurs, à qui j’ai envoyé certains manuscrits, en ont bien voulu témoigner leur approbation; mais à présent, j’ai la vue trop faible; si j’écrivais beaueoup je deviendrais aveugle. 
Cette faiblesse de vue est pour moi une terrible privation; sans cela, savez-vous ce que je ferais, Monsieur?  J’écrirais un livre et je le dédierais à mon maître de littérature, au seul maître que j’aie jamais eu — à vous, Monsieur!  Je vous ai dit souvent en français combien je vous respecte, combien je suis redevable à votre bonté, à vos conseils.  Je voudrais le dire une fois en anglais.  Cela ne se peut pas; il ne faut pas y penser.  La carrière des lettres m’est fermée . . . N’oubliez pas de me dire comment vous vous portez, comment Madame et les enfants se portent.  Je compte bientôt avoir de vos nouvelles; cette idée me souris, car le souvenir de vos bontés ne s’effacera jamais de ma mémoire, et tant que ce souvenir durera, le respect que vous m’avez inspiré durera aussi. 
Agréez, Monsieur,” &c.