The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte (36 page)

There were other protests, and complaints about inaccuracies, because Mrs Gaskell was very gullible, and far from objective in certain areas. It is clear that she was essentially a romantic novelist, and any statement made by her should be taken with a large amount of salt.

Although he may have been angry at what Mrs Gaskell wrote, and disappointed – to say the least – at having gained nothing for himself out of the book, Nicholls did not pursue the aspects of it which concerned him, but continued with his policy of drawing as little attention to himself as possible. Beholden to nobody, he led a quietly pleasant life, and bided his time until the happy day when his father-in-law would die.

As the months went by, a peculiar relationship developed between the ill-assorted trio in the Parsonage.

In 1856 Mr Brontë was an ailing and reclusive seventy-nine-year-old. Nicholls was a handsome man of thirty-eight and Martha was some nine years younger. The only description of her which I have been able to discover was written four years later by Mrs Gaskell's daughter, Meta, who stated that she was ‘a blooming, bright, clean young woman'.

She and Nicholls were to be together in that house, virtually alone, for some six years. He had probably had affaires before going to Haworth, had been married until only recently and, as we shall see, years later he married again. A virile man, he had a healthy sexual appetite as, indeed, had Martha, It was a very cosy arrangement, but one which attracted attention and gossip in the village and did nothing to reduce Nicholls' unpopularity. John Brown, in particular, was not pleased.

As for Mr Brontë, he existed in a world almost entirely of his own making, hardly knowing which day was which or what was going on around him. There is no reason to doubt Martha's assertions that she was kind to him and saw to his needs, for which he was almost pathetically grateful, but there is reason to suspect that her motives were not entirely altruistic.

We have seen that Mr Brontë had bequeathed £30 to her, but I came upon something which made me wonder whether she was wheedling money out of the old man while he was still alive. What I found was a curious little letter which he wrote to her in July 1856. Now, they lived in the same house, and saw each other on a daily basis; so one would think that there was no necessity for letters to pass between them – but this one was different.

If there was ever an envelope it was probably addressed ‘To Whom It May Concern', but what we know for certain is that the note reads: ‘The Money contained in this little Box, consists of sums, given by me, to Martha Brown, at different times, for her faithful services to me and my children. And this money I wish her to keep ready for a time of need.'

Now what is to be made of that? At the time the note was written, Martha had worked at the Parsonage for some sixteen years, so why should it suddenly have been deemed necessary to have a letter confirming that the money in a box was hers – if, in fact, it was? Why should anyone have thought otherwise? Indeed, who was even to know of the very existence of the box if she chose to say nothing of it? It is all very peculiar.

One wonders whether there is any significance in the fact that Mr Brontë apparently wished her to keep the money ‘ready for a time of need'. We know that he hated Nicholls, but he seems to have been genuinely fond of Martha. Did he, perhaps, envisage a time when his son-in-law would dismiss her, leaving her with no immediate means of support – or that, if she
had
received the money legitimately, Nicholls would demand to know from whence it had come and try to claim it for himself?

The only alternative explanation, and the one which I consider the most likely, is that it was Martha herself who felt the need for such a letter, which was written at a time when the old man was confused and so completely vulnerable that he would have put his name to anything. Whether she had been obtaining the cash by fair means or foul, but especially the latter, she had no idea what the future held for her, and she must have realized that when the old man died it might become very necessary for her to be able to prove that the money was hers.

It is not surprising that she never mentions this extra nest-egg in her deposition. We shall never know half of the chicanery that went on under that roof.

Nicholls apparently kept Mr Brontë a virtual prisoner, censoring his mail as far as was possible and fulfilling those of his social engagements which took his fancy.

One example of the state of affairs is displayed in a letter written by the old man to a Haworth couple who had invited him to dinner. He thanked them for their invitation, but then added, ‘I never go out at night, nor indeed by day, to any parties. Mr Nicholls will, however, do himself the pleasure of visiting you at the time specified.' That was a little unfortunate for the hapless couple who, had they wanted Nicholls there, would presumably have invited him in the first instance. As it was, they were saddled with him willy-nilly because he was so pleased to get out of the Parsonage occasionally.

His continuing unpopularity in the village ensured that he received very few, if any, invitations in his own right, and even those people in what would normally be regarded as his social circle were never on intimate terms with him. For instance, Dr Ingham gave Nicholls' Christian name as ‘Abraham' when he recorded Charlotte's death, and did not know what the ‘B' represented. Nicholls soon protested about
that,
and a correction was inserted upon the death certificate.

By 1860 Mr Brontë was completely bedridden. Mrs Gaskell and her daughter visited Haworth and found him unshaven, but with ‘such a gentle, quiet, sweet, half pitiful expression on his mouth'. They had a conversation, but then the old man asked them to leave ‘in five minutes or so'. From what he went on to say, Mrs Gaskell became acutely aware that, ‘he feared Mr Nicholls return from the school – and we were to be safely out of the house before that'. She also told Mr Williams about the visit, commenting that: ‘Mr Nicholls seems to keep him rather
in terrorem.
He is more unpopular in the village than ever.' Nothing, therefore, had changed.

The Revd Patrick Brontë died on 7 June 1861, aged eighty-four years. His death certificate states that he died of ‘Chronic Bronchitis, Dyspepsia, Convulsions 9 hours.' It is signed by the good Dr Ingham, and so we cannot be at all sure of the
true
cause of death. It was
probably
from natural causes, but who knows? Perhaps Nicholls finally became impatient and helped him on his way; it would have been in character.

‘My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.'

Song of Solomon 2:10

O
f course a meeting of the Church Trustees was called after Mr Brontë died to see who was to take his place, and that was what Mr Nicholls seemed to be thinking about all the time. He told me that he felt sure that he would get the job, and I dared not tell him what my Uncle was saying for, if you listened to him, Mr Nicholls would be the last one to be chosen. Uncle said that from what he could gather the Trustees were against him, which was all that really mattered, but in any case so were most of the villagers. Looking at me straight, he said that
I
had not helped Mr Nicholls' chances either by staying on at the Parsonage after his wife died – but he would say no more about that for I was old enough to know what I was about, and it was not really his business anyway.

Well, nothing happened for a while, and because of that Mr Nicholls became even more sure that he would soon be in charge, and he was always going on about the changes he would make both in the Church and the Parsonage – and I could not help but keep hoping that a change in my standing would be one of them.

Came the day, though, when the Trustees had him up before them and told him that they had chosen somebody else – and when he came back he was in a temper such as I had seen on him only once or twice before. He almost spat out the words as he told me what they had said. Seemingly, they had told him that he could stay on in his present job if he wanted to, but he would have to leave the Parsonage when the new man came. If he did not wish to stay in his present job under somebody else, they would be obliged if he would at least stay on and run things until the new man had arrived. Mr Nicholls gave a bitter laugh when he told me that. He said that he would see them all in Hell first – and would leave when
he
wanted to, and that would be just as soon as he could get away from what he called ‘this miserable place', and everyone in it. With that he slammed off up to the moor, and I had no chance to ask him where
I
stood in all that.

No real chance arose in the days straight after that either, for Mr Nicholls started going through the Parsonage like a man with the Devil prodding him. He began upstairs and went through everything as if he was Mother with a fine-tooth comb looking for nits. First of all he emptied the room where Madam had died, and then he began to put things in there that he said he would be taking with him. When he was done, though, there were still a lot of things left over and so I thought that I would have
my
share and I asked Mr Nicholls if I could take a few things. He said I could, except for some he had put to one side, and so I did – and more than a few! After all, I thought I had earned some more pickings in view of all I had done for the family over the years, and all for only a few pence a week at that.

I had the things taken to Sexton Cottage, where Mother put some of them into use. Most of them, though, especially all the books, letters, drawings and papers, were sealed up tight in some boxes and put in one of the back sheds.

As for the things that he had put to one side, after Mr Nicholls had looked at them all more than carefully, they were taken away by the carter – either to people who he had had in and had bought them or to the Auction Rooms at Keighley. Tom Oliver, the carter's son, tried to talk to me, but I would have none of it. I wondered then what I had seen in him at the time, and felt sorry for his wife who I had heard was carrying again, poor soul.

Soon the Parsonage began to look really bare, and there was little for me to do for it was a waste of time cleaning too much with folk in and out all the while, and not caring what they knocked against with the things they were carrying either. With time on my hands, I had more chance of watching what Mr Nicholls was about, and at first I could make neither head nor tail of what he was up to as he acted very oddly indeed.

As I have said, he had been through everything very carefully, but even after a room was quite bare he did not seem content. I heard him tapping on walls and floorboards, and saw him peering into cupboards and every nook and cranny. Why, once, I even caught him looking up a chimney with a lamp, but when I asked him what he was after he just grunted and said that it did not matter.

I must indeed be a simpleton because it was only when I saw the piece of board in front of where I had found Miss Anne's book lying away from the wall that it came to me that it
was
her book he was looking for and, though I felt a bit guilty at seeing him waste so much time, I could not help but smile as I watched him carry on in the same way all over the house.

Only one good thing stands out in my mind about those few black weeks, and that was when Mr Nicholls came to me with the 30 gold sovereigns that Mr Brontë had left to me in his Will. They were in a bag such as the one that held the 10 sovereigns that I had had after Madam's Will only bigger, and I lost no time in hiding them away with the others and Miss Anne's book, for I thought that from what I could see I should soon have need of them.

Then came the evening when Mother asked me what it was in my mind to do when Mr Nicholls was gone. Would I stay on with the new man if he wanted me, or was I going to start looking about for a new place? Well, I did not know what to say to her, for the truth of the matter was that I just did not know. Mr Nicholls had been so distant of late that I had not felt able to ask him what was in
his
mind for me, if anything, and so I just said that there seemed to be plenty of time and I was just thinking on and waiting to see what happened – which was true.

That did not seem to please Mother or my Uncle, and I could not blame them for being out of patience with me for it was evident that there was
not
plenty of time, as anyone could see by the rate that the Parsonage was emptying. There was nothing for it, come what may, I would have to have it out with Mr Nicholls, though that was not something I looked forward to with the mood he was in.

On the very next morning I went in search of him and found him upstairs going through the things that it seemed he was going to keep. I got very little welcome from him and that made me cross, but it also gave me cause to wonder if I was doing the right thing in bothering him at a time when he was so much out of sorts. For two pins I would have turned on my heel and left, but I overcame my fears and managed to get it out that I needed to talk to him at length. With that I sat on one of the boxes that he had got tied up and just waited, but not without a little fluttering inside.

He looked up at me from what he was doing with some papers and I saw that he was unsmiling – as indeed he had been for the past weeks. I had not been able to get above a word or two out of him at a time, and certainly there had been no lovemaking, or anything near it, to set my mind at rest that all was well betwixt us, but I had tried to make allowance for him as I knew that he had been hurt at not getting Mr Brontë's job, and had been so busy as well. Now, though, I felt that things had gone on long enough, and I had made up my mind that I was going to have it out with him.

Anyway, he just asked me, in a nice enough voice though, if it could not wait as he had a lot on his mind, but I said it had waited long enough and he knew by the sharp way that I spoke that I meant it. So he stopped what he was doing and sat on another box across from me.