The Letters of Charlotte Bronte: With a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends Volume III: 1852-1855 (Letters of Charlotte Bronte)

The Letters of Charlotte Bronte¨

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The Letters of Charlotte Bronte¨ With a selection of letters by family and friends edited by MARGARET SMITH

VOLUME THREE 1852–1855

CLARENDON PRESS
OXFORD

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sa˜o Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Margaret Smith 2004. The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–818599–5 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by Kolam Information Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by

AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S This edition owes much to the kindness and patience of those who have answered my queries, and of the scholars who have generously allowed me to beneWt from their own research. I am grateful for the continued help and co-operation of the staV of the Bronte¨ Parsonage Museum, especially Ann Dinsdale, Rachel Terry, and Stephen Whitehead. Bronte¨ Council members Louise and Robert Barnard have responded promptly to my requests for information. The addenda to the present volume will show how much I am indebted to Louise’s meticulous recording of facts and dates from the Leeds Intelligencer. Robin Greenwood’s detailed research into the history of Haworth families has provided information about many people and places mentioned in the letters. Margaret and Robert Cochrane’s biography of Arthur Bell Nicholls, My Dear Boy (1999), has proved to be invaluable. In addition, their skilful detective work on the Ringrose–Helmsing families has thrown light on the provenance of Charlotte Bronte¨’s letters to Amelia Ringrose Taylor. The work of J. A. V. Chapple, Alan Shelston, and the late Arthur Pollard in locating and editing Mrs Gaskell’s letters has provided a rich source of information on the friendship between the two writers. Dr Scott Lewis kindly identiWed a number of important reviews of Villette, and Professor Alan Hill lent me his copy of The Autographic Mirror. Christine Penney of Birmingham University Library has been a constant source of information and encouragement. I am also grateful for the help and courtesy of many other librarians, curators, and archivists. I oVer my thanks to Ms Anne Anninger of Wellesley College, Mass., Dr Iain G. Brown of the National Library of Scotland, Mr J. G. Davies of Leeds Grammar School, Dr Wayne Furman of the New York Public Library, Ms Wilma Grant of Reading Public Library, Ms Sara S. Hodson of the Huntington Library, Ms Helga Hughes, Heritage OYcer, Red House, Gomersal, Mr Martin Killeen of Birmingham University Library, Mr Douglas Knock of the Wellcome Trust Library, Dr David McKitterick of Trinity College Library, Cambridge, Mrs Virginia Murray, curator of the John Murray archive, Ms Sheila Noble of Edinburgh University Library, Ms Diana FranzusoV Peterson of Haverford College Library, Ms Jenny Rathbun of the Houghton Library, Harvard, Ms Margaret Sherry Rich of Princeton University Library, Dr Christopher Sheppard and Dr Oliver Pickering of Leeds University Library, Ms Tara Wenger, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas, Mr Timothy Young, the Beinecke Library, Yale, and Dr David S. Zeidberg of the Huntington Library. For permission to publish or to quote from letters or other documents in their possession, on loan to them, or of which they own the copyright, I thank the authorities of the Berg Collection of English and American Literature, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the British Library; the Bronte¨ Society; the Brotherton Collection and the Fay and GeoVrey Elliott Collection, University of Leeds; the Cely-Trevilian Collection, the Royal Society of Antiquaries, London; the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; the Guildhall Library, London; Haverford College; the Houghton Library, Harvard; the Huntington Library, San Marino, California; the John Murray archive; the John Rylands University Library, University of

vi

acknowledgements

Manchester; the King’s School, Canterbury; the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland; the Gilbert and Amy Angell Collier Montague Collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, the New York Public Library; the Morgan Library, New York, MSS MA 2696 and MA 4500; the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries; the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the English Poetry Collection, Wellesley College; West Yorkshire Archives at Kirklees, HuddersWeld; and the Beinecke Library, Yale University Library. I thank Mr Alan Gill and Mr G. A. Yablon for permission to publish my transcriptions of letters belonging to them; and I thank the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, for allowing me to consult documents in their collection. Every eVort has been made to seek the permission of copyright owners, and any oversights will be rectiWed in future editions. Finally I thank Pat Lawrence for her meticulous copy-editing, and Frances Whistler for her advice and encouragement during the preparation of this edition. M.S.

CONTENTS List of Illustrations

viii

Abbreviations and Symbols

ix

Introduction

xv

The Manuscripts

xxvii

Textual Policy

xxix

A Chronology of Charlotte Bronte¨

xxxii

Biographical Note

xxxv

THE LETTERS

1

January — December 1852

1

January — December 1853

99

January — December 1854

219

January — March 1855

315

April 1855

333

Undated Letters

339

Appendices

343

I. MS Fragments in Charlotte Bronte¨’s Hand

345

II. List of Manuscript Owners and Locations

348

III. IV.

Quotations from Charlotte Bronte¨’s Letters or Conversation in Mrs Gaskell’s Life

350

Charlotte Bronte¨’s Visit to the Gaskells, 21–28 April 1853

351

V. Mrs Gaskell’s Visit to Haworth, September 1853

353

VI. Charlotte Bronte¨’s Wedding

358

VII. Addenda and Corrigenda to Volumes I and II

361

VIII. Forgeries and Uncertain Attribution

375

Cumulative Index of Correspondents for Volumes I–III

381

General Index for Volume III

384

L I S T O F I L LU S T R AT I O N S 1. Carte-de-visite photograph of Charlotte Bronte¨, 1854, inscribed on the reverse in ink, ‘Within a year of CB’s death’. Seton-Gordon Collection, SG 109(a). ß The Bronte¨ Society.

facing p. 184

2. Carte-de-visite photograph of the Revd Arthur Bell Nicholls, taken at about the time of his marriage to Charlotte Bronte¨. ß The Bronte¨ Society.

facing p. 185

3. Photograph of Ellen Nussey in old age. ß The Bronte¨ Society.

facing p. 216

4. First page of letter from A. B. Nicholls to Ellen Nussey, 31 March 1855, telling her of Charlotte Bronte¨’s death. B. S. 247.2. ß The Bronte¨ Society.

facing p. 217

All originals are owned by the Bronte¨ Society, and are in the Bronte¨ Parsonage Museum.

A B B R E V I AT I O N S A N D S Y M B O L S For books the place of publication is London unless otherwise indicated. Reference to letters in Shorter and W & S (see below) is by number, not page. AB ABN AG Allott a.l.s. AR Arbuckle ART Art of the Bronte¨s Ashton Barker BB BCP Beinecke, Yale Berg ‘Biographical Notice’

BL Boase Bon BPM Brewer Brotherton B.S. BST

BUL CB [CBN] CBCircle CBL CH CKS

Anne Bronte¨ Arthur Bell Nicholls Agnes Grey Miriam Allott, The Bronte¨s: The Critical Heritage (1974) autograph letter signed Amelia Ringrose Harriet Martineau’s Letters to Fanny Wedgwood, edited by Elisabeth Sanders Arbuckle (Stanford, Calif. 1983) Amelia Ringrose Taylor Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars, The Art of the Bronte¨s (Cambridge, 1995) Rosemary Ashton, G. H. Lewes: A Life (Oxford, 1991) Juliet R. V. Barker, The Bronte¨s (1994) Branwell Bronte¨ Book of Common Prayer The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Library Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. . . A New Edition Revised, with a Biographical Notice of the Authors . . . by Currer Bell (Smith, Elder and Co., 1850) British Library Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography (6 vols., 1965: 2nd impression of privately printed edn., 1892–1908) Bonnell Collection, Bronte¨ Parsonage Museum, Haworth Bronte¨ Parsonage Museum, Haworth E. C. Brewer, A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (revised and corrected by Ifor H. Evans, 1978) Brotherton Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds Bronte¨ Society Bronte¨ Society Transactions. References are to volume, part, and page[s]; e.g. 17. 90. 339–40. Retitled Bronte¨ Studies from vol. 27, part 1, Mar. 2002 Birmingham University Library Charlotte Bronte¨ [Nicholls] Clement K. Shorter, Charlotte Bronte¨ and her Circle (1896) The Letters of Charlotte Bronte¨, edited by Margaret Smith (3 vols.; Oxford, 1995–2004) Constantin Heger Clement King Shorter

x Cochrane CP Dickens Letters DNB Dugdale ECG EJB EN EN Diary 1849 EVE Fitzwilliam Gaskell Further Letters Ge´rin CB GHL Gr. Graham’s Domestic Medicine GS Harden Harvard Life HM Hours at Home Huxley i.w. JE JKS Jolly Kellett Lady K-S Law-Dixon LD Letters and Memorials Life

abbreviations and symbols Margaret and Robert Cochrane, My Dear Boy: The Life of Arthur Bell Nicholls, B.A., Husband of Charlotte Bronte¨ (Beverley, 1999) The Letters of Mrs Gaskell, edited by J. A. V. Chapple and Arthur Pollard (Manchester, 1966) The Pilgrim Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens (12 vols.; Oxford, 1965–2002) Dictionary of National Biography Thomas Dugdale, Curiosities of Great Britain: England and Wales Delineated (published in parts, c.1837–41) Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Emily Jane Bronte¨ Ellen Nussey Ellen Nussey, MS Diary, BPM Early Victorian England 1830–1865, edited by G. M. Young (2 vols.; 1934) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Further Letters of Mrs Gaskell, edited by John Chapple and Alan Shelston (Manchester and New York, 2000) Winifred Ge´rin, Charlotte Bronte¨: The Evolution of Genius (Oxford, 1967) George Henry Lewes Grolier Collection, BPM Thomas John Graham, Modern Domestic Medicine; . . . To which is added, A Domestic Materia Medica . . . (1826) George Smith The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, edited by Edgar F. Harden (2 vols.; 1994) Second edition of Life (1857) annotated by Harriet Martineau in the Houghton Library, Harvard University MS in Huntington Library, San Marino, California Letters of CB published in Scribners’ Hours at Home, vol. xi (New York, 1870) Leonard Huxley, The House of Smith, Elder (1923) illegible word or words Jane Eyre Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth The Life and Letters of Sydney Dobell, edited by E. J. [Emily Jolly] (2 vols.; 1878) Jocelyn Kellett, Haworth Parsonage: The Home of the Bronte¨s (Haworth, 1977) Lady Kay-Shuttleworth MS formerly in the collection of Sir Alfred J. Law, at Honresfeld, Littleborough, Lancashire John Lock and W. T. Dixon, A Man of Sorrow: The Life Letters and Times of the Rev. Patrick Bronte¨ (1965) Letters and Memorials of Catherine Winkworth, ed. [Susanna Winkworth] (Clifton, 1883) E. C. Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte¨ (2 vols.; 1857) (Wrst edition unless otherwise stated)

abbreviations and symbols Life 1900 Lowell, Harvard LW Martineau Autobiography Mayhall MGC MGC Census Montague MS MT Murray MW Needham Nussey

NYPL OCEL ODEP OED Oxon Parliamentary Gazetteer PB Pegasus in Harness Pierpont Morgan PM Poems 1846 Poems 1848 Princeton, Parrish Collection Princeton, Taylor Collection Ray Letters Ray Wisdom ‘Recollections’ Regional History Rylands

xi

E. C. Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte¨, with an introduction and notes by Clement K. Shorter (Haworth Edition, 1900) Amy Lowell Collection, Harvard University Library Laetitia Wheelwright Harriet Martineau, Autobiography (3 vols., the third including memorials by Maria Weston Chapman; 1877) John Mayhall, The Annals of Yorkshire from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (2 vols.; Leeds, 1862) Mildred G. Christian Mildred G. Christian, A Census of Bronte¨ Manuscripts in the United States, in 5 parts, The Trollopian (1947–8) Montague Collection, New York Public Library Holograph manuscript Mary Taylor John Murray Archive, London Margaret Wooler Ellen Nussey’s copies of letters from CB, bought by Mrs Needham of Blackburn in 1898; now in BPM The Story of the Bronte¨s Their Home, Haunts, Friends and Works. Part Second—Charlotte’s Letters (printed for J. Horsfall Turner; Bingley, 1885–9) (The suppressed edition) New York Public Library The Oxford Companion to English Literature, edited by Margaret Drabble (Oxford, 1985) Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (Oxford, 1970) Oxford English Dictionary J. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses 1715–1886 (4 vols.; London and Oxford, 1887, 1888) The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland . . . 1843–4 (10 vols.; Dublin, London, and Edinburgh, 1844) The Revd Patrick Bronte¨ Peter L. Shillingsburg, Pegasus in Harness: Victorian Publishing and W. M. Thackeray (Charlottesville, Va., and London, 1992) Pierpont Morgan Library, New York Postmark[s] Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell [Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte¨] (Aylott and Jones, May 1846) Reissue of Poems 1846 (Smith, Elder, Oct. 1848) Morris L. Parrish Collection, Drawer A–B, Princeton University Library Robert H. Taylor Collection, Princeton University Library The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, edited by Gordon N. Ray (4 vols.; 1945) Gordon N. Ray, Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom, 1847–1863 (1958) George Smith, ‘Recollections of a long and busy life’ (typescript, National Library of Scotland MSS 23191–2) A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain (15 vols.; 1960–91) John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester

xii Rylands MS Life SE Selleck SG Shorter

Sixty Treasures Slater’s Directory þ date

Stevens Tenant TLS Texas t.p. Venn W&S

Wedderburn WH Whitehead White’s Directory þ date Widener, Harvard Wilson Victoria

Winnifrith Background Wright Wroot

WSW WYAS þ location

abbreviations and symbols E. C. Gaskell, holograph MS of The Life of Charlotte Bronte¨ in Rylands Smith, Elder and Co. R. J. W. Selleck, James Kay-Shuttleworth: Journey of an Outsider (Ilford, Essex, 1994) Seton-Gordon Collection, BPM Clement K. Shorter, The Bronte¨s: Life and Letters (2 vols.; 1908). Letters in Shorter are identiWed by their numbers. Reference to material other than letters is by volume and page. Juliet R. V. Barker, Sixty Treasures (Haworth, 1988) Slater’s Royal National Commercial Directory and Topography of the Counties of Chester. . . Lancaster. . . and Yorkshire (Manchester and London, 1848) Mary Taylor, Friend of Charlotte Bronte¨: Letters from New Zealand and Elsewhere, edited by Joan Stevens (Oxford, 1972) Anne Bronte¨, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Times Literary Supplement Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin title-page J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses 1752–1900, part 2 (6 vols.; Cambridge, 1922–54) The Bronte¨: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence, edited by T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington (4 vols.; Shakespeare Head Bronte¨, Oxford, 1932). Letters in W & S are identiWed by their numbers; other material is referred to by volume and page The Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (39 vols.; 1903) Wuthering Heights Barbara Whitehead, Charlotte Bronte¨ and her ‘Dearest Nell’ (Otley, 1993) William White, Directory and Gazetteer of Leeds, Bradford . . . and the Whole of the Clothing Districts of Yorkshire (SheYeld, 1853) Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Harvard University Library Robert Wilson, The Life and Times of Queen Victoria, with which is incorporated ‘The Domestic Life of the Queen’ by Mrs Oliphant (4 vols.; n.d.; ?1901) Tom Winnifrith, The Bronte¨s and their Background: Romance and Reality (1973) The English Dialect Dictionary, edited by Joseph Wright (6 vols.; 1898–1905) Herbert E. Wroot, Sources of Charlotte Bronte¨’s Novels: Persons and Places (Publications of the Bronte¨ Society, Supplementary Part to no. 4 of vol. 8; Shipley, 1935) William Smith Williams West Yorkshire Archive Service: repositories at Bradford, Calderdale (Halifax), Kirklees (HuddersWeld), Leeds, and WakeWeld

abbreviations and symbols Symbols ’’ * ** [ ] — y

xiii

Deleted in MS by author Added in MS by author Word deleted in MS by Ellen Nussey Placed before and after conjectural readings of phrases or longer passages deleted by Ellen Nussey Added by editor Digits or letters missing or obscured in postmark Northern dialectal word, form, or idiom

Unless otherwise indicated page references to novels by the Bronte¨s are to the Clarendon editions published by Oxford University Press under the general editorship of Ian Jack: Anne Bronte¨, Agnes Grey, edited by Hilda Marsden and Robert InglesWeld, 1988 Anne Bronte¨, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, edited by Herbert Rosengarten, 1992 Charlotte Bronte¨, Jane Eyre, edited by Jane Jack and Margaret Smith, 1969; revd. 1975 Charlotte Bronte¨, The Professor, edited by Margaret Smith and Herbert Rosengarten, 1987 Charlotte Bronte¨, Shirley, edited by Herbert Rosengarten and Margaret Smith, 1979 Charlotte Bronte¨, Villette, edited by Herbert Rosengarten and Margaret Smith, 1984 Emily Bronte¨, Wuthering Heights, edited by Hilda Marsden and Ian Jack, 1976. Chapter references are to editions of the Bronte¨s’ novels with continuously numbered chapters.

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I N T RO D U C T I O N 1852 By 20 November 1852 Charlotte Bronte¨ had completed the writing of Villette, but for much of the year the creative mood had deserted her. Her inability to write had intensiWed the depression caused by lingering illness in January and February, when the solitude of her position ‘fearfully aggravated its other evils’. ‘Some long, stormy days and nights there were when I felt such a craving for support and companionship as I cannot express.’1 Many of the letters of this year reveal an intense longing for companionship, sternly suppressed until company became imperative. ‘I am afraid of caring for you too much,’ Charlotte told Ellen Nussey.2 Villette’s disturbing power derives in part from similar Xuctuations between suppression and the extreme emotion of all too brief fulWlment. The storms also have their counterparts in the novel, in the tempests which ultimately reach a climax of destruction. In chapter 15, ‘The Long Vacation’, after turbulent days of ‘sounding hurricane’, Lucy Snowe has a ‘visitation from eternity. Methought the well-loved dead, who had loved me well in life, met me elsewhere, alienated.’ By 12 March 1852 Charlotte, still, like Lucy, a prey to moods of despair, had ‘not put pen to paper’ for nearly four months. ‘My publisher groans over my long delays’, she conWded to Margaret Wooler.3 She must have refrained from the ‘crusty answers’ she was tempted to give, for, surprised but surely encouraged by Smith, Elder’s proposals to reprint Shirley, and relieved by the return of tolerable health, she revised that novel between 11 and 25 March, when she sent a list of errata to W. S. Williams. In the same letter she commented appreciatively, but with reservations, on the books her publishers generously continued to lend or give to her. Julia Kavanagh’s Women of Christianity, she thought, misrepresented Protestantism. Kavanagh did not realize that it was ‘a quieter creed than Romanism’, making less display of its charities. Charlotte pursued this theme vigorously in characterizing Mme Beck in Villette. She also had the ‘rare and special’ pleasure of reading the Wrst two volumes of Thackeray’s Henry Esmond in manuscript. George Smith had secured the novel for his Wrm by oVering the generous sum of £1,200 for the Wrst edition. Charlotte enjoyed the reading, yet after all felt ‘full as much ire and sorrow as gratitude and admiration’. She admired Thackeray’s wonderful evocation of the ‘spirit and letter’ of the age of Queen Anne, but deplored his Werce pleasure in the relentless dissection of ‘diseased subjects’, and his injustice to women.4 Thackeray’s plan to publish his Lectures on the English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century in volume form also elicited from her a passionate protest 1

LW 12.4.1852.

2

See e.g. EN ?26.10.1852.

3

MW 12.3.1852.

4

GS 14.2.1852.

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against the lax moral values and cynicism of Thackeray’s worship of his ‘Bee¨lzebub’, Fielding.5 This and her condemnation of Thackeray’s lecture on Richard Steele, recalled in a letter from Mrs Gaskell to John Forster of 3 May 1853, show that Branwell Bronte¨’s physical and moral degeneration had left her, as it had left Anne Bronte¨, with a burning hatred of any inXuence which might destroy a promising life. She must have resumed the writing of Villette fairly soon after 12 March. She made good enough progress to begin fair-copying the Wrst volume on 29 March, and probably continued during April. In May a letter from Mary Taylor described the death of Ellen Taylor in New Zealand. Her account ‘ripped up halfscarred wounds with terrible force’, and Mary’s fear that ‘in her dreary solitude’ she might become ‘a stern, harsh, selWsh woman’ struck home: ‘Again and again I have felt it for myself ’, she told Ellen Nussey on 4 May. A four-week visit to Filey from late May until 24 June restored Charlotte’s physical health. She walked as much as she could, and looked ‘almost as sunburnt and weatherbeaten as a Wsherman or a bathing-woman with being out in the open air’.6 But the visit intensiWed her loneliness, for both Filey and Scarborough, which she had to visit to arrange for correction of the lettering on Anne’s gravestone, recalled the desolate days of May and June 1849. In her letter of 23 June she confessed to Margaret Wooler, ‘As to my work—it has stood obstinately still for a long while . . . no spirit moves me.’ Another loss troubled her: there was no letter from James Taylor, who had visited her in April 1851 and had sailed to India leaving her in doubt about his intentions. Though she then believed she must remain single if he was the ‘only husband Fate’ oVered her, she still longed for a clearer understanding of their relationship. ‘All is silent as the grave,’ she told Ellen Nussey on 1 July 1852. James Taylor, small of stature, choleric, and intense, travelling overseas at the behest of others, perhaps inXuenced Charlotte’s portrayal of M. Paul Emanuel in Villette, though the qualities which inspire Lucy Snowe’s deep love are those of Constantin Heger. Charlotte began to write again in July, denying herself visits from friends so that she could concentrate on Villette. Her closest bond was now with her father. She had been anxious about his health when she was away from home, but revealed nothing of her own depression in her letter to him. Instead she described with wonderful vividness the ‘tumbling in of great tawny turbid waves’, and a ‘great dog’ bearing up against them ‘like a seal’. She shared with him, and by implication with his curate, her amusement at the ludicrous manœuvres of the singers and congregation in a tiny brick-Xoored church: ‘Had Mr. Nicholls been there—he certainly would have laughed out.’7 When Mr Bronte¨ suVered apoplectic symptoms in late July, she was severely shocked—the more so since they involved ‘acute inXammation of the eye’. For some days he 5

GS 11.3.1852.

6

MW 23.6.1852.

7

PB 2.6.1852.

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was in a critical state, and Charlotte’s letters convey her anxiety, and the need to conceal her worst fears from her father: ‘To tell him he had been in danger of apoplexy would almost be to kill him at once.’8 By 3 August, when her father was out of danger, Charlotte was able to resume work on Villette. Much of the second volume must have been completed and the third begun at this period. She determined that she could not indulge in the holiday of a visit from Ellen Nussey until she had done her work.9 But by 9 October, ‘excessive solitude’ pressed too heavily, the novel refused to progress, and she begged Ellen to come for ‘one reviving week’—from 15 to 22 October. Refreshed and reinvigorated, she ‘fell to work’ on 23 October, and sent the Wrst two volumes of the fair-copy manuscript to W. S. Williams on 26 October, with the cheering news that the third volume was near completion. In a personal letter to George Smith on 30 October, she told him how she ‘hungered’ for his opinion of the work: she had ‘sometimes desponded and almost despaired’ because she had no listener or adviser: ‘ ‘‘Jane Eyre’’ was not written under such circumstances, nor were two-thirds of ‘‘Shirley’’.’10 Smith must have read rapidly, for on 3 November she was relieved to have his favourable opinion. She frankly discussed the ‘angular’ transfer of John Bretton’s aVections from Ginevra Fanshawe to Paulina, and aYrmed her conviction that ‘Lucy must not marry Dr John’. On 6 November she thanked W. S. Williams for his candid ‘strictures’, but insisted that she could not pile on the agony. ‘The emotion of the book’, she claimed, was ‘kept throughout in tolerable subjection.’ Printing began almost immediately, and Charlotte was already correcting proof-sheets by 23 November. She completed the last six chapters of the novel rapidly, sending volume iii on 20 November. But she was perturbed by Smith’s delay in giving his opinion of this volume, and by the ‘crabbed’ letter she eventually received from him on her return from a visit to Ellen Nussey. Something ‘sticks confoundedly in his throat,’ she told Ellen on ?9 December. Yet she must have known what delicate ground she was treading in presenting recognizable and by no means uncritical portraits of Smith and his mother as the Brettons. If George Smith also detected in the exiling of M. Paul in the service of Mammon a likeness to his own dispatch of James Taylor to India, he might well be displeased and disturbed. He had also paid less than the £700 she and her father had expected for the novel: £500—no more than for Shirley—seemed ‘not quite equitable’. However, it was ‘not to be despised’, and Mrs Smith had written kindly to invite her to stay in London. A quite unexpected event made her willing to escape from the Parsonage for a time. Arthur Nicholls, her father’s curate, whom she had once regarded as a ‘highly uninteresting, narrow and unattractive’ specimen of the ‘coarser sex’, had suddenly revealed the ‘meaning of his constant looks—and strange, feverish 8

EN 26.7.1852.

9

EN 25.8.1852.

10

GS 30.10.1852.

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introduction

restraint’. In an intensely dramatic letter to Ellen of 15 December, she described his proposal: ‘He stopped in the passage: he tapped: like lightning it Xashed on me what was coming. He entered—he stood before me. . . . Shaking from head to foot, looking deadly pale, speaking low, vehemently yet with diYculty—he made me for the Wrst time feel what it costs a man to declare aVection where he doubts response.’11 Her account of the subsequent interview with her father conveys so forcefully his dangerous fury, threatening apoplexy—‘the veins on his temples started up like whip-cord—and his eyes became suddenly bloodshot’—that Charlotte’s promise of a ‘distinct refusal’ is seen as the only possible response at the time. Yet her father’s irrational, excessive hostility to Nicholls would ultimately be self-defeating. Charlotte’s perception of his injustice led her to pity her suitor, and she accompanied her father’s ‘most cruel note’ to him with a letter explaining that though he must ‘never’ expect her to reciprocate his feeling, she did not wish to pain him, and he must keep up ‘his courage and spirits’. Despite her pity, her longing for companionship, and her realization that she was loved, she still felt ‘a sense of incongruity and uncongeniality in feelings, tastes—principles’. Nicholls’s persistence, integrity, and unselWsh loyalty were eventually to overcome her scruples; meanwhile she welcomed and nurtured other relationships—with her women friends, and, until the summer of 1853, with George Smith. From 1852 onwards the letters bear witness to the increasingly warm friendship and mutual appreciation between Charlotte and Mrs Gaskell. Charlotte delighted in the Cranford episodes, published at intervals in Dickens’s Household Words from December 1851. She also read and admired Gaskell’s ‘noble sketch’ of the novel that would become Ruth, and was unselWshly concerned that its publication should not clash with that of Villette. Fuller texts of Charlotte’s letters to Mrs Gaskell have been provided than in previous editions. The collection of Gaskell MSS now in the John Rylands University Library in Manchester was not available to Shorter or Wise and Symington; but in the present edition the complete letter of 6 February 1852 adds to Charlotte’s account of her own severe pain and depression during the past winter, three paragraphs showing her concern for and gratitude to others—concern for Gaskell’s ‘poor little Julia’, gratitude for the kind messages of Mrs Gaskell and Mrs Davenport, for the cheering company of the Nusseys who care for her personally, not as the famous Currer Bell; and pleasure in Mrs Gaskell’s favourable opinion of the young Frank Williams, for whom Charlotte had provided an introduction. A complete letter of 22 May 1852 sets in context the two previously printed (and widely separated) fragments—Charlotte’s praise of ‘Visiting at Cranford’ (‘I wished the paper had been twice as long’) and her shyness in the company of the ‘little wonders’, Florence and Julia Gaskell. We learn that 11

EN 15.12.1852.

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Mrs Gaskell had sent a collection of her daughter Meta’s letters, and that Charlotte had enjoyed them as ‘specially conversible, companionable, interesting’, with her ‘Mamma’s gift’ of creating ‘with a few strokes’ ‘a lively little pen-andink sketch of character’. 1853 By 2 January 1853 Charlotte had realized that she would have to go to London to correct the remaining proof-sheets of Villette. ‘Papa wants me to go too—to be out of the way,’ she told Ellen. She was kindly received by the Smiths, and her time passed ‘pleasantly enough’. While she noticed that George Smith was physically showing the signs of overwork, he and his mother and sisters thought ‘Miss Bronte¨ better than we had before seen her; . . . in better health, and in much better spirits.’12 She surprised the family by choosing to visit ‘real’ rather than decorative places—prisons, the Bank, the Exchange, the Foundling and Bethlem hospitals. Meanwhile the publication of Villette was delayed until 28 January, so that it should not clash with that of Mrs Gaskell’s Ruth, on 10 January. Unsurprisingly, Villette did not take the public by storm, as Jane Eyre had done; but for several reviewers it made up for the ground lost in Shirley. The secular journals praised the ‘admirable delineation of character’, originality, passion, and power; the ‘charm of a style that never grows tame’. Harriet Martineau mingled eulogy with criticism in a long review in the Daily News for 3 February, as she did also in a private letter to Charlotte. ‘All the female characters,’ she wrote, ‘in all their thoughts and lives, are full of one thing, or are regarded by the reader in the light of that one thought—love. . . . It is not thus in real life. There are substantial, heartfelt interests for women of all ages, and under ordinary circumstances, quite apart from love.’13 Charlotte never forgave her. ‘I know what love is as I understand it—& if man or woman shd. feel ashamed of feeling such love—then is there nothing right, noble, faithful, truthful, unselWsh on this earth as I comprehend rectitude, nobleness, Wdelity, truth & disinterestedness.’14 High church reviewers, especially those in the Guardian and Christian Remembrancer, while conceding the novel’s merits, its strong, clear, and often eloquent style, hurt Charlotte in a diVerent way by criticizing her attitude to religion. She was accused of degrading Christianity to a ‘loose sentiment or feeling’, a religion without awe, of constantly quoting or playing with the sacred pages of the Bible, and (by the Remembrancer) of having been formerly ‘an alien, it might seem, from society, and amenable to none of its laws’.15 In a letter of protest to the editor, Charlotte explained that her seclusion was caused by her ‘plain duty’ as the only survivor of six children, to care for her aged father, 12 14

GS to Harriet Martineau 18.3.1853; p. 136. To Harriet Martineau [?Feb. 1853].

13

15

Allott 172–3. Allott 203.

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suVering from ‘partial privation and threatened loss of sight’. Though her protest was generally temperate in tone, it ended with the violent image of a poisoned shaft wounding the hunter’s prey—echoing the recurrent images of torture, fate, and pursuing furies, paralysing ‘chill and poison’ in Villette.16 Mrs Gaskell reported to John Forster in May 1853 that Charlotte, who had stayed with her for a week in April, was not going to write for some time; but, perhaps stimulated by the visit, Charlotte began almost immediately to draft a new story. Three fragments of ‘Willie Ellin’ survive, written in May and June. They return to the two brothers theme of the juvenilia, which she had reworked in the still-unpublished The Professor, in the fragmentary story called ‘The Moores’ or ‘John Henry’, and in Shirley. The opening episode is striking in its evocation of the divided self—an eerie vision of the self as the ‘other’. Charlotte made a last attempt to begin a new novel, ‘Emma’, on 27 November 1853. Its two chapters were to be printed in the Cornhill Magazine for April 1860, with a Wne preliminary essay by Thackeray praising Charlotte Bronte¨’s ‘noble English’ and ‘burning love of truth’. Charlotte’s adulation of Thackeray as the ‘Wrst social regenerator of the day’ had been reduced to a much more critical appraisal by 1853. Henry Esmond, she thought, was uneven: volume iii had the ‘most sparkle’, the others ‘too much history’; the real should be sparingly introduced amidst the ideal. Thackeray’s lecture on Swift had been ‘almost matchless’; but she was not enthralled by the opening chapters of his new novel, The Newcomes. Her publishers’ generous supply of new books, her friendship with Mrs Gaskell, and her reading of newspapers like the Examiner with its regular essays and reviews nevertheless continued to connect her with cultural and literary life, and to increase her critical discrimination. Julia Kavanagh’s Nathalie had impressed her in January 1851, but her recent Daisy Burns was curtly dismissed as ‘disastrous’, a tawdry deformity with no real blood or life.17 On the other hand she could thank Smith, Elder for giving her ‘Ruskin’s beautiful book’, the second volume of his magniWcent The Stones of Venice ‘so soon after’ its publication in July 1853. She also received from them Dr John Forbes’s now-forgotten Memorandums made in Ireland in the Autumn of 1852—an illustrated work which must have given her a foretaste of some of the exhilarating scenery she and Nicholls were to enjoy together during their honeymoon.18 It was probably one of the books ‘acceptable and interesting’ to her father.19 Mrs Gaskell sent a copy of Ruth to Charlotte as soon as it was published, and received two generously appreciative letters from her, praising this controversial novel’s goodness and philanthropic purpose, and delighting in the servant Sally as ‘an apple of gold’. Mr Bronte¨ also assured Mrs Gaskell that he admired her works; some he had read for himself, others were read to him by Charlotte. Thanking Mrs Gaskell for the gift of 16

17

18.7.1853.

WSW 9.3.1853.

18

GS 14.7.1853 n. 2.

19

WSW 28.5.1853.

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Cranford in volume form on 9 July 1853, she wrote, ‘I have read it over twice; once to myself, and once aloud to my Father. I Wnd it pleasurable reading—graphic, pithy, penetrating, shrewd, yet kind and indulgent.’ She also read aloud to him one of Robert Robinson’s published letters, thoughtfully sent by Mrs Gaskell after her visit to Haworth in September, and found that he could forestall her ‘in each paragraph: it seems he had read that very letter Wfty years ago at Cambridge’.20 As in 1852, letters from Charlotte to Mrs Gaskell published in the Wise and Symington edition have been supplemented or replaced by MS-based texts, which reveal more fully their mutual understanding and liking. Three fragments of letters to Gaskell have been juxtaposed in late January 1853, since they may be parts of a single letter; nine other letters are printed in full, and an unlocated letter of 25 September is noted. Mr Bronte¨’s enthusiastic encouragement of the friendship is also evident in the complete texts of his letters to Gaskell; and a fuller selection of Gaskell’s letters to John Forster and other friends (Lady Kay-Shuttleworth, Monckton Milnes, Lady Hatherton) sets the friendship, and especially Gaskell’s crucial visit to Haworth in September 1853, in context. While this friendship strengthened, others weakened in the course of the year. Personal links with Smith, Elder became more fragile. Charlotte’s correspondence with George Smith continued to be friendly, candid, and easy during the winter and spring, but Smith’s letters gradually declined in frequency. He was overworked, and, more importantly, he met the young and beautiful Elizabeth Blakeway in April, and immediately determined that she should become his wife—though he did not propose until November. Charlotte, naturally ignorant of this new preoccupation, was inevitably hurt. In a letter of June or early July, he acknowledged that in his exhaustion from overwork he had (in Charlotte’s words) turned ‘with distaste from the task of answering a friendly letter’. Replying on 3 July, she wrote: ‘Let me just say, though I say it not without pain, a correspondence which has not interest enough in itself to sustain life—ought to die.’ The complete version of this letter, like the letter from Mrs Smith in December 1853 which broke the news about her son’s ‘important step in life’—his engagement—was unknown before 1970, when most of the original MSS of the Smith correspondence were given to the BPM. They included Charlotte’s extraordinarily curt note of ‘congratulation’ to Smith of ?10 December. It followed an almost equally ungracious note to W. S. Williams of 6 December, telling him not ‘to select or send any more books’. In this year there was also an almost unprecedented rift in the friendship between Charlotte and Ellen Nussey. It was caused by Ellen’s irrational and excessive jealousy of Charlotte’s rapprochement with Arthur Nicholls, revealed 20

ECG 15.11.1853.

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to her when she stayed at Haworth from 30 June until early July 1853. In his desperation after the debacle of December 1852, Nicholls had applied to become a missionary to Australia, withdrawn his application, moved instead to a curacy at Kirk Smeaton, begun a secret correspondence with Charlotte, hovered near Haworth during his visits to the area, and convinced her of his unselWsh devotion. With great diYculty she won her father’s permission for the correspondence to continue, and by the end of June she was willing to contemplate marriage with him. Ellen’s furious reaction must have caused her to speak unforgivably. Mary Taylor’s response to a complaining letter from Ellen reveals plainly enough what cause Charlotte had for the ensuing breach: ‘You talk wonderful nonsense abt C. Bronte¨ in yr letter. What do you mean about ‘‘bearing her position so long, & enduring to the end’’? & still better—‘‘bearing our lot whatever it is’’. If its C’s lot to be married shd n’t she bear that too? . . . How wd. she be inconsistent with herself in marrying? . . . It is an outrageous exaction to expect her to give up her choice in a matter so important.’21 Charlotte’s feeling of loneliness pervades her letters after 12 December, when she felt distanced from her London friends as well as from Ellen. Longing to end the estrangement, but hardly knowing how, she reXected on the self-discipline which kept other solitary people like Margaret Wooler serene and unsoured. It is evident that neither Charlotte nor Ellen had yet broken their silence. A letter dated by Charlotte simply ‘Thursday Morng’ is dated by Wise and Symington ‘[October 6th, 1853]’, halfway through the estrangement; but there is no manuscript evidence for this. The paper used suits a date before June 1853, as does the friendly tone of the letter, which gives no hint of alienation. I have tentatively dated it in early May 1853, where it forms part of a coherent sequence of letters. 1854 Charlotte’s correspondence during 1854 reveals her cherishing of friendships which helped to Wll the void caused by the virtual severance of her ties with her publishers. The satisfaction of discussing with W. S. Williams and George Smith the books she had read was no longer hers, but she could still write in keen appreciation of Mrs Gaskell’s work: ‘Morton Hall’ was ‘capitally told’, Charlotte assured her, in a letter not previously published in full;22 and she wrote sympathetically of Gaskell’s diYculties with Dickens over the serialization of North and South. An important letter to Gaskell of 30 September 1854, represented by no more than fragments in previous editions, shows Charlotte’s sensitive reaction to the chapters venturing on the ‘thorny’ ground of Mr Hale’s leaving the Church of England, her realization that it was not an 21

MT to EN 24.2–3.3.1854.

22

ECG ?early Jan. 1854.

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attack on the Church, and her praise of Gaskell’s understanding of ‘the Genius of the North’. She responded conscientiously to less congenial acquaintances, sending to Sydney Dobell a carefully phrased critique of his monstrous ‘spasmodic’ poem Balder, encouraging him to believe that he would one day set his critics right in the second part of the poem. In two previously unpublished letters of 22 February and 17 March 1854 she courteously agreed to look over some poems by the young Henry Garrs, (a brother of the former parsonage servants Sarah and Nancy Garrs), praised his thoughts, and pointed out where his ‘execution’ was defective. Charlotte’s own creative impulse seems to have been dormant until the very end of 1854. In her personal life, however, there was a renaissance. The year began inauspiciously with her father’s continuing refusal to countenance her marriage to Arthur Nicholls. Charlotte’s letter to Ellen Nussey of 11 April 1854 recounts the gradual progress of the courtship, and Mr Bronte¨’s eventual capitulation. Though she makes clear how hostile and ‘bitterly unjust’ her father had been, it is a brief and fairly restrained account, perhaps to make her changed fortune and her engagement more palatable to Ellen, only recently reconciled after the long estrangement. Charlotte, encouraged by Margaret Wooler, had taken the initiative in healing the breach. When Charlotte visited Mrs Gaskell in May 1854 she gave a much more dramatic account of her deWance of her father, and her eventual victory. Gaskell reported the conversation with relish in a letter to John Forster of ?17 May: ‘She said ‘‘Father I am not a young girl, not a young woman even—I never was pretty. I now am ugly. . . . do you think there are many men who would serve seven years for me?’’ . . . For a week he never spoke to her. . . . Then the old servant interfered, and asked him, sitting blind & alone, ‘‘if he wished to kill his daughter?’’ . . . And so it has ended where it has done.’23 Charlotte also frankly acknowledged her reservations about Mr Nicholls to Mrs Gaskell and Catherine Winkworth, for she recognized the diVerence between his high church rigidity and her own tolerance. One of her most vigorous letters on the subject, written to Mrs Gaskell on 26 April 1854, and printed in BST (1952), 12. 62. 123, was not included in the Wise and Symington edition. It shows a Wne blending of amusement and serious respect which augurs well for her marriage: ‘I had a little talk with him about my ‘‘latitudinarianism’’ and his opposite quality. He did not bristle up at all—nor feel stiV and unmanageable—he only groaned a little over something in ‘‘Shirley’’ . . . Yet if he is indulgent to some points in me—I shall have carefully to respect certain reverse points in him. . . . But I will not be a bigot.’ The climax of the year was of course Charlotte’s marriage to Nicholls on 29 June. In a recently discovered letter-fragment, probably written in early June, she gives a spirited account of her purchase of the wedding-dress: ‘white I had to 23

See pp. 261–2.

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buy and did buy to my own amazement—but I took care to get it in cheap material—there were some insinuations about silk . . . but I stuck convulsively to muslin.’ The letters she wrote during her honeymoon convey with wonderful vividness her sense of discovery—of the kindness and quiet ‘English’ manners of Nicholls’s family, of their aVection and high esteem for her husband, of the splendid scenery in Wales ‘surpassing anything I remember of the English Lakes’, and of the ‘battling of waves with rocks’ oV the ‘wild, iron-bound coast’ at Kilkee in Ireland, such as she had never imagined. Even more important were the discoveries she made about her husband: like her, he could ‘laugh instead of grumbling’ at the deWciencies of Kilkee’s ‘splendidly designated’ West End Hotel; like her, he rejoiced ‘to sit on a rock’, watch ‘the broad Atlantic boiling & foaming at our feet’, and allow Charlotte also to look and be silent. Her narrow escape from death when she fell from her unruly horse, and felt it ‘kick, plunge, trample’ round her, left Charlotte ‘full of gratitude for more sakes’ than her own for her survival. Above all, she realized that Nicholls’s ‘kind and ceaseless protection’ had ‘ever surrounded her’. Even though secure in this knowledge, she was uneasy because her father had not been well. She had ‘been longing, longing intensely sometimes, to be at home. Indeed, I could enjoy and rest no more, and so home we are going.’24 Once at home, she was relieved to Wnd that her father recovered fairly soon, and that the ‘understanding’ between him and her husband seemed excellent. In gratitude for the parishioners’ ‘hearty welcome’ on their return to Haworth, she and her husband asked 500 people ‘to Tea and Supper in the school-room’, and Charlotte was touched by praise of her husband as ‘a consistent Christian and a kind gentleman’.25 Though she found new demands on her time, and assured Ellen that marriage was ‘a solemn and strange and perilous thing’, her happiness, trust, and ever-deepening aVection for Nicholls are touchingly evident in the letters written during her all too short married life. ‘He is well—thank God—and so am I—and he is ‘‘my dear boy’’ certainly—dearer now than he was six months ago’, she told Ellen on 26 December. Near the close of 1854 she began to share her life as a writer with him, for he recalled how she read aloud the two chapters of her ‘Emma’, one evening as they sat ‘by the Wre listening to the howling of the wind about the house’. ‘The critics will accuse you of repetition,’ he remarked, and her reply showed that she intended to go on writing: ‘Oh! I shall alter that. I always begin two or three times before I can please myself.’26 It was inevitable that Charlotte’s relationship with Ellen should change. When she wrote freely to Ellen about Amelia Taylor’s ‘fancies’, or warned Ellen that if she heard Robert Clapham disparage single women, she would ‘go oV like a bomb-shell’, Nicholls was hovering near and ‘glancing over this note’. Ellen must burn the letter when she had read it, he insisted, ‘or ‘‘there will be no 24

EN [?28.7.1854].

25

MW 22.8.1854.

26

Cornhill Magazine, i (1860), 486.

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27

more’’ ’. Charlotte couldn’t help laughing—‘this seems to me so funny’. But on 31 October Charlotte reported that Arthur required Ellen to give ‘a plain pledge’ to burn her letters. Ellen thereupon pledged herself to their destruction provided that Nicholls pledged himself to ‘no censorship in the matter communicated’.28 Nicholls agreed to the condition, and Charlotte wrote ‘Arthur thanks you for the promise’. Ellen had been displaced from her privileged position as Charlotte’s most intimate friend, and the grudge which she nursed against Nicholls was to become an obsession with her in later years. In the letters from Charlotte (obviously still unburnt) that she edited for production by Horsfall Turner in the 1880s, and later for publication by C. K. Shorter, Ellen made sure that her pledge was concealed: the relevant sentence was printed as ‘Arthur wishes you would burn my letters’, and ‘censorship’ became ‘authorship’. Wise and Symington retained these doctored texts. However fortunate for posterity the survival of most of Charlotte’s letters to her may be, Ellen’s own later censorship, ironically enough, was responsible for the prolonged and serious distortion of the historical record. As Ellen herself wrote in a letter of 31 March 1897, complaining about the ‘sins’ of the Bronte¨ Society, ‘People are very apt to forget that Truth in the long run asserts itself & they cannot escape it.’ Meanwhile, in November 1854, Charlotte enjoyed ‘inexpressibly’ a walk over the moors with her husband, rejoicing in the sight of the waterfall, ‘a perfect torrent raving over the rocks white and bountiful’, and returning home ‘under a streaming sky’.29 ‘I did not achieve the walk to the waterfall with impunity— though I changed my wet things immediately on returning home,’ Charlotte admitted on 7 December, ‘yet I felt a chill afterwards, and the same night had sore throat and cold—however I am better now—but not quite well.’ She probably improved later in December, for on 19 January 1855 she told Ellen that her health had been ‘really very good’ till about ten days ago. Indeed, in November 1854 she had been willing to visit Ellen’s home at Brookroyd despite reports of Mercy Nussey’s illness. Fortunately Mr Nicholls did not allow her to do so, for (as Margaret Wooler informed them), Mercy had been suVering from typhus fever. Charlotte was anxious about her, and about Joe Taylor, who was seriously ill. Her concerned, loving letters to Joe’s wife were to continue in the early months of 1855. 1855 Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth had invited the Nichollses to visit Gawthorpe in January. Charlotte, gratiWed by his appreciation of her husband, accepted the invitation; they travelled by train on 9 January, and stayed two or three days.30 Mrs Gaskell writes that while at Gawthorpe ‘she increased her lingering cold, by 27 29

EN ?20.10.1854. EN 29.11.1854.

28 30

EN to ABN [Nov. 1854] p. 297. JKS 5.1.1855.

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a long walk over damp ground in thin shoes’.31 Whether this was so or not, it must have been on the day she travelled to Gawthorpe that Charlotte Wrst experienced what were for her quite unusual symptoms: ‘The stomach seemed quite suddenly to lose its tone—indigestion and continual faint sickness have been my portion ever since,’ she wrote to Ellen on 19 January. ‘Don’t conjecture—dear Nell—for it is too soon yet—though I certainly never before felt as I have done lately.’ Like her father and the Parsonage servant Martha Brown, Charlotte clearly thought she might be pregnant. It was Mr Bronte¨ who wrote to Sir James on 3 February, after she had been ‘conWn’d to her bed’ for several days, that the Bradford physician Dr Macturk and the village surgeon ‘both think her sickness is symptomatic—and that after a few weeks they hope her health, will again return’.32 Despite her continuing illness and increasing emaciation, most of her letters in February dwell on her husband’s care rather than her own suVerings: ‘No kinder better husband than mine it seems can there be in the world,’ she told Laetitia Wheelwright on 15 February. ‘I do not want now for kind companionship in health and the tenderest nursing in sickness.’ But by the end of the month she could not conceal her distress. Her last letters, written from her ‘weary bed’, are inWnitely touching in their faint, pitifully uneven pencil writing: ‘Let me speak the plain truth—my suVerings are very great—my nights indescribable—sickness with scarce a reprieve—I strain until what I vomit is mixed with blood.’ Yet she remembers to send a prayer for Joe Taylor and for ‘all of us health strength—comfort’.33 She still believed she was pregnant. Knowing that Mary Hewitt had a diYcult pregnancy before giving birth to her son Edward, she asked ‘about Mrs. Hewitt’s case, how long she was ill and in what way’, and was grateful for her ‘sensible clear letter’ when Ellen forwarded it in early March.34 There was a brief improvement for two days in March during the only mild weather in a winter and spring of exceptional severity, ‘cold, nipping, and miserable beyond record’.35 On 15 March Mr Nicholls had to write on Charlotte’s behalf to say that the ‘bad weather’ had thrown her back; and in the early morning of 31 March she died. We shall never know for certain whether the ‘phthisis’—the wasting to which her death was attributed by Dr Ingham on the death certiWcate—had been caused by, or was a concomitant of, pregnancy. If it was, she might have suVered from hyperemesis gravidarum, the excessive sickness during pregnancy fatal to one of her delicate build when eVective treatment was unknown. The bereaved father and husband were united in their grief. Arthur Nicholls proved himself worthy of Charlotte’s trust and love, fulWlling for the rest of Mr Bronte¨’s life her dearest wish that he would be a ‘devoted and reliable’ assistant to her father. 31 33 35

32 Life ii. 321. Not in W & S; inaccurate version of part of the letter in LD 474–5. 34 Amelia Taylor ?late Feb. 1855. EN c.21.2.1855, ?early Mar. 1855. Annual Register (1855), ‘Chronicle’, p. 1.

THE MANUSCRIPTS Most of the surviving holograph MSS of Charlotte Bronte¨’s letters have been well preserved. A few have been damaged in the past by clumsy mounting or unsuitable storage, but most of these have been conserved by modern methods and are accessible and legible. Charlotte normally wrote in ink which has faded to a light or medium brown, and used a clear cursive hand. The few exceptions are described in the notes. She rarely gave a full address at the beginning of a letter, but most often signed her name formally as C Bronte¨, Currer Bell, C Bell, or (after her marriage) C B Nicholls. In letters to Ellen Nussey she sometimes used Charlotte, CB, or a nickname. Her deletions consist of straight strokes, scribbles, or very occasionally more thorough deletion with the addition of extra ascenders and descenders. Most of the heavy deletions in darker ink were made by Ellen Nussey, who also scraped out parts of some names of people or places. Some letters have been mutilated for the sake of the signatures. Charlotte Bronte¨ naturally wrote more neatly or formally to some correspondents than others, but the development of her handwriting may be roughly divided into four periods. 1829–37: a carefully formed, fairly well-spaced copperplate style, sloping to the right, with elongated ascenders and descenders, usually written with a Wnepointed pen. A Wnal ‘d’ is not usually looped back, ‘y’ may be Wnished with either a narrow downward loop or a long shallow backward curve. A long ‘s’ is habitually used in the address for the Wrst ‘s’ in ‘Miss’ and ‘Nussey’, and occasionally elsewhere. Letters in this and, less often, in later periods, may be wholly or partly cross-written. The size of the writing is appropriate to the paper used: normally large double sheets of watermarked wove or laid, with an average leaf-size of about 186 mm.  228 mm. Smaller double sheets of watermarked paper c.113 mm.  185 mm. were used between June and October 1836. 1838–40: the gradual development of a more loosely formed, bolder, irregular hand, retaining long ascenders and descenders, and often with wider spacing between lines and words. Thicker pens and darker ink may be used. A Wnal ‘y’ may be Wnished with a straight descender, a smooth backward curve, or an angled hook. The ascender of a Wnal ‘d’ may be straight or looped backward. Letters of late 1839 and early 1840 are often noticeably untidy. The long ‘s’ is retained in ‘Miss’ and ‘Nussey’. A smaller, neater version of this hand develops towards the end of 1840. Large double sheets of unwatermarked paper range from a leaf-size of c.183 mm.  224 mm. to c.204 mm.  258 mm. 1841–3: a transition from a small but slightly irregular and disjointed hand with occasional blotted loops to a neat, regularly sloped, very small, clear style. The tail of a Wnal ‘y’ may be sharply angled, or have a narrow loop. Medial and Wnal

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‘d’ are often neatly curved backward, an initial ‘d’ may also have a full round loop formed anti-clockwise and recrossing the stem to link with the next letter. The long ‘s’ is retained in ‘Miss’ in a formal address, as it would be in almost all remaining letters to the end of Charlotte’s life; but by the end of 1842 ‘Nussey’ usually lacks the long ‘s’. The paper size varies according to whether Charlotte was away from home or not, but typically consists of double sheets of unwatermarked wove with an average leaf-size of c.114  188 mm. A few large or watermarked papers were used. 1844–55: the handwriting has settled into more or less its Wnal form by 1844–5. It is usually small, Xuent, even, slightly and regularly sloped to the right, written with a Wne nib, and with most ascenders and descenders pleasantly proportioned and harmoniously related to the Xow of the script. Hasty notes to Ellen Nussey may be less regular. Sharply angled ‘y’ tails give place on the whole to a wider angle or smoother curve, but the curving stroke may be prolonged backward to the beginning of a word or beyond. The looped-back ‘d’ continues and may be a loosely formed open letter; Wnal ‘d’ may be a straight ascender, or it may loop or curve back towards the beginning of a word. Small double sheets of unwatermarked cream paper are the norm in this period with leaf-sizes ranging from c.91  138 mm. to 117  186 mm., but there are occasional sequences of watermarked laid paper, or of double sheets with distinctive embossed devices on the Wrst leaf. After the deaths of Branwell and Emily, and for a year after Anne Bronte¨’s death, greyish black-bordered mourning stationery is normally but not invariably used. It should be emphasized that there are exceptional handwriting styles and types of paper in all periods. See the examples of handwriting illustrated in Volume I of these Letters between pages 318 and 319.

T E X T UA L P O L I C Y The aim has been to include all known letters to or from Charlotte Bronte¨, together with a selection of contemporary letters and other material referring to her or illuminating her own references. Wherever possible, texts are based on original holograph manuscripts. Most transcriptions have been made from (or checked against) the manuscripts, and the rest from photocopies. Letters for which the manuscripts have not been traced are based on secondary sources: copy manuscripts, quotations from or transcriptions in printed sources, summaries or references in sale catalogues or elsewhere. As with all such material, complete Wdelity to the original manuscript cannot be assumed. The relative value of the major secondary sources has been indicated in the introductory history of the letters in Volume I of these Letters. Composite texts have been produced where individual secondary texts appear to be incomplete, and where variants may derive from the original manuscript. A note on the text gives the source of such variants. No attempt has been made to list all variants between secondary sources. Where two secondary texts are substantially the same, the earlier is normally preferred. Fragmentary letters and references to missing letters are placed in the main chronological sequence if an approximate date can be provided. Undatable fragments and references are printed together at the end of Volume III. Appendix VIII provides a list of forgeries. Most letters written before and some written after 1840 were sent folded and sealed, with the address of the recipient on the outer fold. Addresses so written are described as ‘integral’ in the notes. Letters written during and after 1840 could be enclosed in envelopes. A few manuscript letters are accompanied by their original envelopes. The BPM, West Yorkshire archives (Kirklees), and some private owners have separate collections of envelopes, many of them annotated by Ellen Nussey. These have been matched with the appropriate letters wherever possible, using evidence derived from paper, size, stamps, seals, wafers, postmarks, address, or annotation. Format and Conventions The heading of each letter is given in a standardized form. Letters from Charlotte Bronte¨ are headed ‘To [recipient]’, with the date. The heading of a letter from any other person begins with the name of the sender, as for example ‘Emily J. Bronte¨ to Ellen Nussey’. A reference in the notes to ‘EN 15.4.1839’ signiWes a letter from CB to Ellen Nussey. Date: dates provided by the author are included in the heading of the letter in a standardized form, and are not repeated in the text unless they occur between

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textual policy

the body of the letter and a postscript. Dates derived from postmarks or other reasonably reliable evidence are given in square brackets. A query is used to indicate dates derived from handwriting, paper, watermarks, separate envelopes, from the content of the letter, or from external sources, such as Ellen Nussey’s diaries and letters to other friends, or the diary papers written by Emily and Anne Bronte¨. Evidence for the suggested date is given in a note where necessary. The sender’s address is recorded before the letter in the form in which it occurs in the MS. If no address is given in the MS, the probable place of origin is given in square brackets. Source: If the holograph manuscript has been located, it is the source of the text, and is identiWed after each letter. For ease of reference the number of the letter in the Wise and Symington edition of 1932 is given, if a version or part of the letter appears there. A page reference to the Wrst publication, if any, is given for letters not in W & S. The source of a letter for which the manuscript has not been located is given in a note on the text. See below. The recipient’s address is given after the letter if there is manuscript evidence for it, along with postmarks if any. Contemporary annotations by recipients or owners of manuscripts such as Ellen Nussey or A. B. Nicholls are recorded. Other annotations such as postage costs, library reference numbers, and descriptions are normally omitted. Notes on the text are given for obscure or mutilated manuscripts, and for letters not based on holograph manuscripts, to explain the choice of copy-text[s] and the inclusion of variants if any. Here and throughout the notes letters in Shorter and W & S are identiWed by their numbers, other material by volume and page. Spelling: archaic or irregular spellings are recorded as written, without ‘sic’, provided their meaning is recognizable. Forms such as ‘Mr’, ‘Esqr’ have been standardized to ‘Mr.’, ‘Esqr.’. Abbreviated words are so recorded if they are readily comprehensible (‘Yrs’, ‘aVectly’) but are expanded if not (‘ev[enin]g’, ‘morn[in]g’). Initials used for proper names are expanded on their Wrst use in a letter, but retained thereafter. Capital initials are retained where they are clearly intentional. Punctuation: authorial punctuation is followed as faithfully as possible. Alterations or additions, indicated by square brackets, are occasionally made in order to prevent misunderstanding or confusion. Where CB fails to supply a full-stop, a longer-than-usual space between words indicates the appropriate sentence division. Lacunae: words or single letters inadvertently omitted by the writer are supplied in square brackets. Lacunae caused by the mutilation, repair, or imperfect mounting of a manuscript are indicated by ‘[ . . . ]’. Conjectural readings may be supplied in square brackets. Notes give the reason for the

textual policy

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lacunae and if necessary the source of the material supplied. Omissions in a text based on a secondary source are indicated by ‘ . . . ’. Additions and Deletions: authorial additions or insertions in MSS are enclosed within ’ ’. Other additions are given in square brackets. Matter deleted by the author is enclosed within angle brackets < >. Proper names and short phrases in letters to Ellen Nussey which have been wholly or partly deleted by her are preceded by a single asterisk, with the addition of a query if her deletion makes the reference uncertain. Longer phrases or passages deleted by Ellen Nussey are enclosed within pairs of asterisks (** **) and the readings given must be assumed to be conjectural. A note is given when the obliteration is exceptionally thorough or confusing. The suggested readings of such passages derive from the visible shapes of letters, word divisions indicated by varying density of deletion, diVering ink colours, and context. Deciphering has occasionally been assisted by the use of a light-table or ultra-violet light. References: the place of publication of books referred to in the notes is London unless otherwise indicated. Volume Division: the present volume is the third of three. Each volume includes biographical notes and a chronology appropriate to the period covered, and an index. A cumulative index of correspondents is provided in this volume.

A C H R O N O LO G Y O F C H A R LOT T E B R O N T E¨ 1 8 5 2 – 1 8 5 5 1852

January–February ?27 January–11 February 12 March 11–25 March 29 March c.27 May–24 June 23 June July–September

?15–22 October 23 October 26 October 20 November c. 20 November ?24 November–8 December November–December 13 December

1853

5 January–2 February 27 January 28 January February–April ?late March 21–8 April 25 April 28 April–?4 May 27 May May–late June early June

30 June–early July

CB still suVering from the eVects of a ‘low nervous fever’ and mercury poisoning. She gradually recovers CB with the Nusseys at Brookroyd Villette does not progress: CB has not ‘put pen to paper’ for nearly four months CB revises Shirley for a second edition She begins to write a fair copy of vol. i of Villette CB at CliV House, Filey Villette has stood still ‘for a long while’ CB resumes work on Villette, but Wnds her life is ‘a pale blank’. She is worried by her father’s apoplectic symptoms in July–August EN at the Parsonage The creative mood returns; CB writes rapidly CB sends Villette MSS vols. i and ii to Smith, Elder CB sends Villette MS vol. iii to Smith, Elder Second edition of Shirley published, dated 1853 on t.p. CB with the Nusseys at Brookroyd CB correcting proof-sheets of Villette A. B. Nicholls proposes marriage. Mr Bronte¨’s hostile reaction and apoplectic symptoms make it impossible for CB to accept the proposal CB’s last visit to London; she stays with the Smiths, correcting the proofs of Villette Gift-copies of Villette sent out Villette by Currer Bell published in three volumes by Smith, Elder and Co. Reviews of Villette are on the whole favourable, except for those in the high church journals CB declines to visit Harriet Martineau, and breaks oV her friendship CB visits Mrs Gaskell in Manchester With the Gaskells, CB sees Twelfth Night CB with the Nusseys at Brookroyd Mr Nicholls leaves Haworth for the south of England, before taking up his curacy at Kirk Smeaton, Yorks. CB writes three draft MS fragments of a story, ‘Willie Ellin’ CB’s inXuenza, tic douleureux, and headaches cause the postponement of Mrs Gaskell’s visit to Haworth Mr Bronte¨ has an ‘attack’ which causes temporary blindness Ellen Nussey visits the Parsonage

a c h r o n o l o g y o f c h a r l o t t e b r o n t E¨ July 1853–late February 1854 August

?13–16 September 19–?23 September ?6–13 October 27 November 10 December 1854

January 21 February 3–8 April 1–4 May 4–8 May 8–11 May 29 June 29 June–4 July 4–7 July

7 July

18 July 27 July

28 July 1 August 21 September–early October 11–13 November

1855

9–?12 January c.9 January 19 January 29 January 30 January

xxxiii

Ellen’s antagonism to the idea of CB marrying Mr Nicholls causes estrangement between her and CB. CB spends a week with Joseph Taylor and his family, travelling to Scotland and returning with them to Ilkley, Yorks. CB in Ilkley Mrs Gaskell visits Haworth Parsonage CB stays with Margaret Wooler in Hornsea, Yorks. CB writes ‘Emma’, the opening chapters of a new novel CB writes a brief, cool, note congratulating George Smith on his engagement to Elizabeth Blakeway Mr Nicholls spends ten days near Haworth By this date CB has written to Ellen Nussey after hearing of her illness Mr Nicholls near Haworth. He and CB become engaged CB’s last visit to the Gaskells in Manchester CB with the Taylors at Hunsworth CB with the Nusseys at Brookroyd CB and Nicholls marry at Haworth and begin their honeymoon journey They travel to and stay at Conwy and Bangor, North Wales They travel to Holyhead, cross the Irish Channel to Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire), and go on to Dublin, where they spend two days With three of ABN’s relatives, they travel to Banagher, King’s County (OValy), where they are welcomed by ABN’s Aunt Harriette Bell and her family at Cuba House They have left Banagher in order to travel to Limerick and Kilkee, County Clare They have reached Cork, after visiting Tarbert, Tralee, Killarney (where Charlotte narrowly escapes death in the Gap of Dunloe), and GlengariV They have returned to Dublin, from where they will travel back to Haworth In Haworth Ellen Nussey visits the Parsonage Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth visits the Parsonage and oVers ABN the living of Padiham, near Gawthorpe Hall. ABN declines the oVer The Nichollses stay at Gawthorpe, where CBN takes ‘a long walk over damp ground in thin shoes’ CBN begins to experience indigestion and sickness, and to grow thin CBN writes to postpone a visit to Brookroyd She has been conWned to bed for some days Amos Ingham of Haworth and Dr Macturk of Bradford both think Charlotte’s sickness and indisposition are ‘symptomatic’ (of pregnancy?). Macturk predicts an illness ‘of some duration’ but ‘no immediate danger’

x x x iv

a c h r o n o l o g y o f c h a r l o t t e b r o n t E¨ 14 February 17 February late February ?early March 15 March 31 March

4 April 16 June

By this date CBN is completely prostrated ‘with weakness and sickness and frequent fever’ The Parsonage servant Tabitha Aykroyd dies. She is buried on 21 February CBN is suVering ‘sickness with scarce a reprieve’ CBN is somewhat better for two days, but her ‘skeleton emaciation’ continues unchanged She is very ill CBN dies at Haworth, of phthisis according to the death certiWcate, but possibly of hyperemesis gravidarum, excessive sickness during pregnancy CBN is buried in Haworth church Mr Bronte¨ asks Mrs Gaskell to write an account of Charlotte’s life, with ‘some remarks on her works’. She agrees, and begins to gather materials for the Life, which will be published by Smith, Elder in 1857, followed by The Professor, A Tale by Currer Bell, in two volumes.

B I O G R A P H I C A L N OT E The Revd Arthur Bell Nicholls, 6 January 1819–2 December 1906 Arthur Bell Nicholls was Mr Bronte¨’s curate from May 1845 to 1861, and Charlotte’s husband for a tragically short time, from 29 June 1854 until her death on 31 March 1855.1 He was born in Killead, County Antrim, one of ten children of a Presbyterian farmer, William Nichols or Nicholl[s], and his wife Margaret, ne´e Bell, an Anglican. In 1825 Arthur and his brother Alan were sent to the care of their uncle Alan Bell, headmaster of the Royal Free School at Banagher, King’s County (now OValy). They lived in Dr Bell’s home, the impressive Georgian Cuba House, were brought up as Anglicans, and received a classical education at the school. Dr Bell presumably paid Arthur’s fees when he was admitted as a pensioner to Trinity College Dublin on 4 July 1836. He matriculated in January 1837, but, for some unknown reason, did not graduate until February 1844, when he obtained a second-class BA and a ‘Testimonium’ in Divinity. He eventually sought a ‘Title for Orders’ in England, possibly through advertisement in the Ecclesiastical Gazette. He was ordained deacon at LichWeld on 18 May 1845, and licensed to the curacy of Haworth on 5 June 1845, having already oYciated there on 25, 28, and 29 May. Charlotte commented: ‘He appears a respectable young man, reads well, and I hope will give satisfaction.’ On 30 January 1854 Richard Monckton Milnes described him in a letter to Elizabeth Gaskell as ‘a strong-built, somewhat hard-featured man, with a good deal of Celtic sentiment about his manner & voice—quite of the type of the Northern Irishmen’. Mr Nicholls’s religious views are probably reXected in the devotional works he acquired in 1848: sermons by Dr William Beveridge and selected works by Dr William Hall, reprinted and published by the Religious Tract Society; and The Churchman’s Companion (SPCK, 1845). SigniWcantly, in or after 1848, that year of Bronte¨ deaths, Mr Nicholls turned down the corner of a page in Dr Hall’s ‘Devout Meditations on Death’. His competence in the Classics is implied by William Cartman’s gift of a 1671 Elzevir printing of Valerii Maximi—Dictorum Factorumque Memorabilium Libri IX. On the other hand Nicholls’s copy of Cranford reminds one that his customary gravity could give way to mirth. His Haworth landlady, Martha Brown’s mother, ‘heard him giving vent to roars of laughter as he sat alone [reading Shirley]—clapping his hands and stamping on the Xoor. . . . he triumphed in his own character’ (EN ?28.1.1850). 1

A version of this Biographical Note also appears in Christine Alexander and Margaret Smith, The Oxford Companion to the Bronte¨s (Oxford, 2003).

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biographical note

Fortunately Charlotte’s portrayal of him as ‘Mr Macarthey’ (‘Macarthur’ in the Shirley manuscript) is benign. ‘Decent, decorous, and conscientious’, he ‘laboured faithfully in the parish: the schools, both Sunday and day-schools, Xourished under his sway’ (ch. 37). The truth of this portrait is attested in the parish registers, where his name as oYciating minister appears so frequently, and in the formal reference given by Joseph Grant in January 1853: through Nicholls’s work and inXuence, Haworth National School scholars had increased from sixty to between two and three hundred, church attendance was up sixfold, and in the nearby village of Stanbury a schoolroom and place of worship had been erected. Mr Nicholls also supported public-spirited eVorts such as Mr Bronte¨’s petition to the General Board of Health on 29 August 1849. In Shirley Charlotte qualiWes her praise of ‘Macarthey’ by good-humoured mockery of his ‘proper, steady-going, clerical faults . . . Wnding himself invited to tea with a Dissenter would unhinge him for a week . . . the thought of an unbaptized fellow-creature being interred with Christian rites . . . could make strange havoc in Mr. Macarthey’s physical and mental economy; otherwise, he was sane and rational, diligent and charitable.’ There is a hint here of the narrowness and Puseyite tendencies which later troubled Charlotte, since she feared they might inhibit her friendship with the Unitarian Gaskells. These tendencies, and his generally reserved, stiV manner, did not endear him to the parishioners, though there were stories of his kindness to individuals, and he visited poor parishioners almost every afternoon. After his successful campaign in 1847 against the Haworth women’s custom of drying washing in the churchyard, Charlotte ruefully noted that many parishioners wished he would not return after his holiday in Ireland. In July 1851, however, she observed a change in his customary behaviour; he was ‘good—mild and uncontentious’ when he took tea at the Parsonage. A year later, in a letter from Filey to her father of 2 June 1852, she sent the Wrst of several friendly messages to Nicholls, with the comment that she was sure he would ‘laugh out’ at the ‘ludicrous’ behaviour of the singers in the mouldy, decayed church she had visited. But at home she began to observe with ‘dim misgivings’ his low spirits, ‘threats of expatriation’, ‘constant looks at her, and ‘strange, feverish restraint’. They culminated in his proposal on 13 December 1852, when, ‘shaking from head to foot, looking deadly pale’ he made her feel ‘what it costs a man to declare aVection where he doubts response’ (EN 15.12.1852). In this and in her subsequent letters Charlotte describes the aftermath—Mr Bronte¨’s apoplectic fury, her refusal, Nicholls’s misery, and his decision to leave Haworth. In January 1853 he wrote to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, oVering himself as a missionary to the Australian Colonies of Sydney, Melbourne, or Adelaide. Mr Bronte¨, one of six referees who praised his character and conduct, admitted that he had behaved ‘wisely, soberly, and piously’, and was ‘sound and orthodox’ in principles. Though invited for an interview, he

biographical note

xxxvii

changed his mind by 26 February, postponed his decision, then gave a return of his rheumatism as the reason for withdrawing his application. He remained miserable and touchy, and he broke down completely when he took the Whitsunday Communion service in the presence of Charlotte and a crowded congregation; but when questioned he told the churchwardens that his imminent departure was his own fault, not Mr Bronte¨’s. On 25 May 1853 sympathetic parishioners presented him with a gold watch as a farewell gift. On 26 May Charlotte saw him lingering at the Parsonage gate after handing over the National School deeds to Mr Bronte¨: going out, she found him in a ‘paroxysm of anguish’ and let him know she was not ‘cruelly blind and indiVerent to his constancy and grief ’. His duties were to be taken by the unsatisfactory George De Renzy, while he became curate to the Revd Thomas Cator, MA (1790–1864), at Kirk Smeaton near Pontefract. His letters to Charlotte, at Wrst unanswered, eventually led to their clandestine correspondence, meetings when he stayed with the Grants near Haworth, Mr Bronte¨’s grudging permission for his daughter to become better acquainted with him, and Wnally to consent for their marriage. Nicholls had refused livings oVered to him, through Monckton Milnes’s inXuence, because he knew he could never marry Charlotte unless he could return to Haworth, for she would not leave her father. He gained Mr Bronte¨’s respect by proving himself ‘disinterested and forbearing’, and won from Charlotte ‘more than mere cool respect’, for ‘with exquisitely keen feelings’, he could still ‘freely forgive’. During the honeymoon in Wales and Ireland which followed their quiet wedding on 29 June 1854, he proved to be tenderly considerate to Charlotte, who learnt how highly valued he was by his relatives. Like her, he was exhilarated by the magniWcence of the Atlantic waves; together they visited exquisite scenery at Kilkee, GlengariV, and Killarney; and, by reacting swiftly when he realized she had fallen from her horse in the Gap of Dunloe, he helped to save her life. During their marriage their mutual love grew strong. By 26 December 1854 she could write, ‘He is ‘‘my dear boy’’ certainly, dearer now than he was six months ago.’ He did not discourage her from writing. C. K. Shorter stated in Life 1900 that ‘Mr. Nicholls repudiates . . . [the allegation] that he discouraged his wife’s literary activities’. On the contrary, they had read her chapters of ‘Emma’ and ‘chatted pleasantly over the possible development of the plot’ (634). She tolerated and was amused by his quirks of behaviour—as for example when he ‘threatened to bolt’ when the aVected Amelia Taylor visited the Parsonage, or when he demanded that Ellen Nussey should burn Charlotte’s rash letters, which he thought as ‘dangerous as lucifer matches’. In her last illness she wrote to Laetitia Wheelwright: ‘No kinder better husband than mine . . . can there be in the world. I do not want now for kind companionship in health and the tenderest nursing in sickness’ (15.2.1855).

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biographical note

After Charlotte’s death he cared faithfully for her father and, much against his own inclination, agreed to Mr Bronte¨’s wish that Mrs Gaskell should write a biography of her, even though he was horriWed that she wanted to quote directly from Charlotte’s letters, and that he was required to cede copyright for the quotations as used in the Life. He wrote indignantly to George Smith that the matter had ‘from beginning to end . . . been a source of pain and annoyance’ to him. It continued to cause him distress after Mrs Gaskell’s statements about Cowan Bridge and Carus Wilson led to an acrimonious newspaper controversy from April to August 1857, in which Charlotte’s motives in ‘caricaturing’ the school and making injurious ‘misstatements’ about it were questioned. Mr Nicholls wrote Wve indignant letters, his ‘sole desire’ being ‘to defend the dead from the aspersions cast on her by interested individuals’ (W & S Appendix I). His concern to protect her reputation led him to obliterate several phrases in the manuscript of The Professor, which he edited for publication. He also supplied George Smith with the manuscript and a transcription of ‘Emma’, and three poems, one by Emily and two by Charlotte, for the Cornhill Magazine. See BST 19. 3. 97–106 and 21. 4. 101–15. Though many parishioners expected him to be the new incumbent after Mr Bronte¨’s death on 7 June 1861, the Church Trustees voted against him by Wve to four. He immediately resigned. Before returning to Banagher, he gave away many items, especially to Martha and Tabitha Brown; retained private papers and other treasured Bronte¨ possessions such as Charlotte’s writing-desk, workbox, and paintbox; and put up the remaining contents of the Parsonage for auction on 1 October 1861. In Banagher he lived at the Hill House (still extant), the home of his widowed aunt Mrs Harriette Bell and her daughter Mary Anna. Martha Brown visited frequently as a welcome guest and helper in the household. Nicholls corresponded with her when she returned to Haworth, taking a kindly interest in her life there, and occasionally sending gifts of money. On 26 August 1864 he married Mary Anna (1830–1914). Having known him from her childhood, she understood him well, recognizing the devotion to Charlotte which led him to place mementoes of her throughout the house. Shorter, who met both husband and wife at Banagher on 31 March 1895, described their marriage as one of ‘unmixed blessedness’. He had found Nicholls ‘in a home of supreme simplicity and charm, esteemed by all who knew him and idolised in his own household’. Though he regularly attended church, Nicholls did not return to the ministry, possibly owing to throat trouble. He occupied himself with farming in a small way, and, unlike Ellen Nussey, did not attempt to edit Charlotte’s letters or exploit his connection with her. Ellen had been hostile to him from shortly after Charlotte’s death. She was jealous of him as the usurper of her position as Charlotte’s closest friend, on the defensive about her failure to burn Charlotte’s letters, and sceptical about his possession of copyright in them. The publication

biographical note

xxxix

of Thomas Wemyss Reid’s articles on Charlotte in Macmillan’s Magazine for August–October 1876, for which Ellen had provided much information, caused Mr Nicholls to break his long silence on Bronte¨ matters, to protest against an ambiguous passage on Charlotte’s ‘sole failure of duty’ and against the revelation of her feelings for ‘Mr X’ ( James Taylor). Nicholls blamed himself for not cautioning Ellen that his wife’s letters were not ‘hers for publication’. Shorter and T. J. Wise were well aware of the laws of copyright. Shorter charmed his way into Mr Nicholls’s good will, and on 23 November 1895 purchased the copyright in MSS which passed through his hands, paying Mr Nicholls £150. In fact most of Nicholls’s manuscripts were passed on to Wise, and Nicholls was again distressed by the unscrupulous use of letters, when Charlotte’s description of his breakdown at the Whitsuntide service was printed in Sotheby’s catalogue for 28 February 1896 (and later printed in CBCircle). But he still apparently trusted Shorter in 1900, when his assistance was acknowledged in Shorter’s edition of the Life. During the last few years of his life, Nicholls’s health declined. Mary Anna cared for him devotedly, helped by a professional nurse from the end of November 1906, when bronchitis was diagnosed. He died on 2 December 1906, and was buried in St Paul’s churchyard, Banagher. Mary Anna, who died on 27 February 1915, lies in the same grave.

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The Letters January–December 1852

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To George Smith, 1 January 1852 [Haworth] My dear Sir After all I have written a line to Miss Martineau.1 I grieve to think that the whole matter should be defeated through the fatal perversity of a nature on the whole great and good. I have just said these words to her—and whether they will produce any beneWcial eVect or whether she will be displeased—I do not know. ‘‘What Mr. Smith wanted and expected was another ‘‘Deerbrook’’.2 He did not look for politics or theology. ‘‘Deerbrook’’ made you beloved wherever it was read: ‘‘Oliver Weld’’ will not have this eVect It is powerful; it is vivid ’it must strike’—but it will rarely please. You think perhaps it will do good? Not so much good as ‘‘Deerbrook’’ did. Better the highest part of what is in your own self than all the political and religious controversy in the world. Rest a little while, Consider the matter over—and see whether you have not another ‘‘Deerbrook’’ in your heart to give England.’’ I wish you and yours a happy New Year C Bronte¨ MS BPM SG 65. W & S 734. Address (integral): George Smith Esqr. PM: not in MS. 1. For Harriet Martineau, see the Biographical Note, CBL ii, pp. xlix–li. Since July 1851 CB had acted as a go-between for the proposed publication of Miss Martineau’s novel Oliver Weld by Smith, Elder. Martineau’s views on society in general and her advocacy of total religious toleration caused George Smith to refuse it as too risky a business venture. See references to the novel in CBL ii, esp. 679–81, 732–4. 2. Martineau’s novel, Wrst published by Edward Moxon in 1839, and generally well received. In 1853, after George Smith wrote to her, ‘I should be very glad to publish a cheap edition of a Book which has always been a favorite of mine,’ she passed on the good news to Fanny Wedgwood:‘ . . . he oVered £50, and sent the money by return of post!’ (GS to Martineau 18.3.1853, BUL Martineau Collection MS HM 1206; Martineau to Wedgwood 11.4.1853, Arbuckle 125.)

To W. S. Williams, [?1 January 1852] [Haworth] My dear Sir, I am glad of the opportunity of writing to you, for I have long wished to send you a little note, and was only deterred from doing so by the conviction that the period preceding Christmas must be a very busy one to you. I have wished to thank you for your last,1 which gave me very genuine pleasure. You ascribe to Mr. Taylor an excellent character; such a man’s

4

the letters, 1852

friendship, at any rate, should not be disregarded; and if the principles and disposition be what you say, faults of manner and even of temper ought to weigh light in the balance. I always believed in his judgment and good-sense, but what I doubted was his kindness—he seemed to me a little too harsh, rigid, and unsympathising. Now, judgment, sense, principle are invaluable and quite indispensable points, but one would be thankful for a little feeling, a little indulgence in addition—without these, poor fallible human nature shrinks under the domination of the sterner qualities. I answered Mr. Taylor’s letter by the mail of the 19th November, sending it direct, for, on reXection, I did not see why I should trouble you with it. Did your son Frank2 call on Mrs. Gaskell? and how did he like her? My health has not been very satisfactory lately, but I think, though I vary almost daily, I am much better than I was a fortnight ago.3 All the winter the fact of my never being able to stoop over a desk without bringing on pain and oppression in the chest has been a great aZiction to me, and the want of tranquil rest at night has tried me much, but I hope for the better times. The doctors say that there is no organic mischief. Wishing a happy New Year to you, C. Bronte¨. MS untraced. W & S 735. Address: not in source. PM: not in source. Date: from source. Text: CBCircle 322. Shorter 546 and W & S 735 reproduce this text, save for the reading ‘good sense’ in para. 2. 1. On ?10 Nov. 1851 CB had asked Mr Williams for his opinion of James Taylor’s character: was he a man ‘of any feeling’? On the strength of Williams’s reply she wrote a carefully worded letter to Taylor on 15 Nov. 1851. 2. Frank Williams was an artist. See CB’s letters to Mrs Gaskell of ?3 and 6.11.1851, 6.2.1852, and notes. 3. In Dec. 1851 CB had suVered from a bad cold accompanied by headaches, toothaches, ‘stupefaction and depression’. Mr Ruddock prescribed ‘blue pills’ which caused severe mercury poisoning (CBL ii. 735 n. 3).

To Ellen Nussey, [6 January 1852] [Haworth] Tuesday Morng. Dear Ellen I am sorry to say that my headache did turn out to be symptomatic of relapse1—but on the whole I think I am better again now—and I do not in the least regret your going2—really when I am downright ill—i.e. under the pressure of headache, sickness or other prostrating ailment—I would rather have it

the letters, 1852

5

to myself and not feel it augmented by the sense of its being burdensome to others—3 It is when bodily ailment is gone, and the mind alone languishes that cheerful and cherished society becomes a boon. You did me great good whilst you stayed here—and you went away just when your kindness would have become unavailing, and I and my liver were best left alone. All yesterday I was very very sick—to-day I feel somewhat relieved—though qualms of nausea haunt me still. I expect Mr. Ruddock4 and shall ask him whether part of this sickness is not owing to his medicine, which I suspect and hope. Poor Ellen *Taylor!5 I fear hers will not be a long life—Should she die in New Zealand—it will be most sad for Mary—there are no particulars of her illness given in the letter I have seen I had a note yesterday from Amelia—She says that when you were at Hunsworth6 she thought you looking much better—which is a great deal from her who is so apt to grumble about your looks. Mind—however—that the circumstance of your being pretty well just now does not make you grow careless. Ill health is sooner fallen into tha[n] got out of—I fear the changeful weather of the last day or two will have tried Mr. Clapham7 as it tried me—but to-day is Wner and I hope he will feel its good eVects— With kind regards to all at Brookroyd I am [dearest Nell Yours faithfully] If I feel that it will do me good to go to Brookroyd for a few days I will tell you— but at present—I am certainly best at home. MS BPM Bon 239. Envelope BPM B.S. 104/52. W & S 736 as [Jan. 5th, 1852]. Address (envelope): Miss Ellen Nussey j Brookroyd j Birstal j Leeds PM: (i) HAWORTH (ii) KEIGHLEY j JA 6 j 1852 (iii) LEEDS j JA 6 j 1852 j F (iv) BIRSTALL Annotation (i) by EN in ink: 255 Jan 5—52 (ii) by EN in pencil: CB health (iii) on envelope by EN in pencil: Jan 6—52 Date: ‘Tuesday Morng’ indicates 6, not 5, January. Text: Ellen Nussey wrote ‘dearest Nell j Yours faithfully’ to replace the original words cut out of the manuscript, but she did not replace the signature. 1. Though CB told George Smith on 31 Dec. 1851 that she was ‘somewhat relieved’ about her health, ‘harassing symptoms’ heralded this relapse. 2. Ellen stayed at Haworth 20–9 Dec. 1851. See EN 31.12.1851 and MW 20.1.[1852]. 3. The second deleted word may read ‘thou’—perhaps the beginning of ‘though’. 4. William Ruddock (1814–60), surgeon, MRCS, LSA 1837 (Provincial Medical Directory, 1851, 482). See Bronte¨ Studies (Mar. 2002), 27. 1. 76–8. 5. Mary Taylor’s cousin Ellen (1826–27 Dec. 1851) had died of pulmonary TB in Wellington, New Zealand, where she had shared in Mary’s shopkeeping business since 16 Aug. 1849. See CBL ii. 83 n., 184 n. 6. Mary Taylor’s brother Joseph and his wife Amelia, ne´e Ringrose, lived in a cottage near the Taylors’ Hunsworth mill. See CBL i. 396, ii. 477–8. 7. Ellen Nussey’s brother-in-law Robert Clapham (?1788–1855), who had married Ann Nussey on 26 Sept. 1849. He had been ill since Dec. 1851.

6

the letters, 1852

To Ellen Nussey, [?14 January 1852] [Haworth] My dear Ellen I have certainly been ill enough since I wrote to you—but do not be alarmed or uneasy—I believe my suVerings have been partly—perhaps in a great measure owing to the medicine—the pills given me—they were alterative and contained a mixture of Mercury1—this did not suit me—I was brought to a