The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte

9

As I prepare to describe the events that occurred after my return to Haworth, I realize that my version of them comprises but one portion of the story. Another belongs to my sister Emily. I then had no idea of her state of mind, for we were on such poor terms that we hardly spoke; and later, misfortune silenced Emily forever. I now face a difficult choice: Shall I allow her to remain as unknown to the world as she wished, or shall I reveal her nature in all its tragic, human beauty? The truth requires that I defy her wishes. It is my only hope of uncovering the complete facts of my story.

The table before me is covered with journals that Emily left. What she endured in the weeks following Isabel White’s murder lie in the words I have culled from these journals. May God forgive me if I have defiled her memory for the sake of veracity. With great foreboding I open the volume for that year and copy her account herewith. The Journal of Emily Bronte Wednesday, 12 July 1848. A sullen, unsettling day after a night of rain. More storms threaten-I sense their approach rumbling in my bones. The earth, the sighing wind, and the stone walls of the parsonage breathe a fetid moisture. Oh, how this weather darkens my spirits, which are already in grievous state! Shall the very heavens weep for the troubled souls inside our house? This morning, when I went upstairs to clean Branwell’s room, I found him still abed, a ghastly, emaciated wraith. “Emily, please give me some money,” he moaned. As I pulled the soiled coverlet off him, he clutched my hands. I twisted out from his clammy, revolting grasp, crying, “I won’t. Let me go!” “Just a sixpence,” Branwell pleaded. “If I cannot buy laudanum, I shall die!” Once I would have tried to coax him into resisting self-destruction, but I have no more patience nor compassion for the wretch. What are his afflictions compared to mine? Branwell began sobbing. “Oh, heartless sister! Oh, cruel world! I’m dying, and nobody cares! Oh, my dear, lost Lydia!” “Be quiet!” I shouted, incensed, because I have suffered a far greater loss. Our commotion brought Papa hurrying to us. Branwell launched himself from the bed and fell on his knees in front of Papa. “Father, I need money. Please, you must help me!” Papa shook his head in sorrow. “I’ve already spent a fortune paying your debts. I’ll not indulge you anymore.” Desperate cunning shone in Branwell’s eyes. “If you won’t help me, I’ll kill myself!” He snatched a razor from the dresser; I grabbed his wrist. We struggled together in a mad dance, Branwell trying to slash his throat, I trying to prevent him. “Let me end my miserable life!” he screamed. Perhaps I should, thought I. Perhaps I should afterward turn the weapon on myself-then neither of us need suffer more. But Papa wrested the razor away from Branwell. We locked him inside the room. He pounded on the door, ranting in maniacal fury. I went to the kitchen and began kneading bread dough, trying to distract myself from Branwell’s uproar and my own worries. Where are Anne and Charlotte? Come back, come back! my heart silently calls to them. But still I burn with my fury at their betrayal. Perhaps I should not mind so much if only I could write! But I cannot. Many are the stories begun since I wrote Wuthering Heights -all abandoned incomplete. Whenever I now try to write, I hear the damning words of the critics. They trumpet that my novel “shows the brutalizing influence of unchecked passion.” They revile my characters as “most revolting to our feelings.” What misery is mine! I can only pretend to work, covering pages with ramblings like these, while inspiration hides behind a locked door inside me. Fortunate Charlotte, who enjoys travel and is writing a new book! Fortunate Anne, who has published a second novel! Oh, my heart shall break!

Such bewilderment and consternation did Emily’s words cause me! How could she consider the mortal sin of taking her own life? Had I but known of her pain, I would have been more sensitive towards her. But she never gave me a clue. She always appeared supremely confident of her talent, as well she should have been: Her poems and stories were things of splendor that never failed to move me. In literary expertise she was the leader, my idol, even though I was her elder. And I never suspected that she cared what the critics said; she seemed so indifferent to public opinion, even during her youth. When Emily was seventeen, she came with me to Roe Head School where I taught. As eccentric in appearance as ever, she was the target of bullies, from whom I could not always protect her. But she never flinched at their tormenting. She held her head high, a soldier in an enemy prison camp. How I admired her! My weakness is that I always want people to like me-and my work-even when I care not for them. How I wished I could follow Emily’s example!

But now I understand that her attitude sheltered a tender soul. Emily pretended to scorn the critics while she bled inside from their harsh comments about Wuthering Heights. She hid her wounds from me.

When Anne and I at last returned to Haworth, we hurried into the kitchen, where Emily was kneading bread dough.

“Emily!” Anne cried. “How I’ve missed you!”

Emily glared. She showed no sign that she’d missed us or worried about us. Anne’s smile faded.

“Has all been well here while we were gone?” I asked anxiously. Emily behaved as though she had not heard me.

Anne offered our sister the book she had purchased in London. “We’ve brought you a present-it’s Tennyson’s poems.”

When Emily made no move to take the gift, Anne sighed and laid it on the table. Anne and I could only exchange worried glances and silently agree that we had best leave her alone until her mood passed. We crept out of the kitchen.

Two days after that unhappy homecoming, a spell of wet, chill weather descended upon Haworth. I donned my bonnet and cloak, armed myself with an umbrella, and headed down Church Road to post a letter to Ellen Nussey, my dearest friend. Ellen was something of a busybody, so avid was she to know everything I did or thought. I had lately neglected my correspondence with her, and I’d written a letter of vague explanation.

Moreover, I could no longer tolerate confinement in the parsonage, where acrimony reigned. Emily continued sulking. Branwell had gone into the village and returned home uproariously drunk. Anne had received a review from the Spectator that read, “ The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, like its predecessor, suggests the idea of considerable abilities ill applied…”

Although the wind now blew rain against me and tugged at my umbrella, I welcomed solitude. But solitude was not to be mine. As I neared the bottom of the lane, I was accosted by the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls.

“Good day, Miss Bronte,” he said in his thick Irish brogue. “May I walk with you?”

Mr. Nicholls had come from Dublin to be Papa’s curate. A man of twenty-nine years, he had heavy dark brown hair and eyebrows, heavy features, heavy legs, and a stolid, serious nature. I found him annoying, for he often sought me out although I could not imagine why. I reluctantly let him share my umbrella and accepted his company.

We walked down Main Street, through the village. The rows of stone cottages were grimy with peat smoke and dripping with rain. Mr. Nicholls and I skirted gutters overflowing with malodorous drainage from cesspits. Haworth is a poor, unhealthful place riddled with poverty born of slumps in the textile industry. Damp, tiny cellar dwellings house large families, fevers rage, and funerals comprise a large part of Papa’s duties. That day the village seemed even smaller and poorer than usual, after my recent adventures in London.

I refrained from speech in the hope that my companion would grow bored and leave me, for I wanted to think about Gilbert White. Mr. White and I had talked together on the train all the way from Keighley to Haworth. We at first discussed Isabel, but soon our conversation turned personal. I told Mr. White how I had happened upon some poems written by Emily and thought to publish a book of poetry by my sisters and myself. I admitted that only two copies had sold, but the venture had spurred me to attempt novels. Mr. White told me about growing up in the town of Bradford, his father’s fatal accident in a factory, and how charity had paid for his education at boarding school, then divinity college at Oxford. We had much in common-our Northern origins, our lives as charity children, our faith. He became the most intimate male acquaintance I’d ever had.

Before we parted at Keighley Station, he jotted on a paper the address of his vicarage, presented it to me, and said, “Shall we write to each other?”

“Do you mean-if I remember anything else about the men on the train-or if you learn anything from your mother?” I asked, astounded because no man I admired had ever before asked me to correspond with him. “Why, yes, of course.”

“Whatever you choose to write, I’ll be delighted to read,” Mr. White said earnestly.

I thought it prudent to wait until he wrote before writing him a letter, and while I waited, I relived every moment spent with him. I dressed my hair with undue care, as if he could see me; we carried on imaginary conversations in my mind. For a woman to nurture affection without proof of requital is sheer folly, as I well knew, but I could not help myself.

Now Arthur Nicholls said, “Yesterday, at the stationer’s shop, I met a stranger.” Close beside me under the umbrella, he smelled of cooked cabbage. How I wished I had Gilbert White as my companion instead! “He asked about you, Miss Bronte.”

“Oh?” I said, bored by anything the curate had to say.

“He wanted to know who your family and friends are, what you do, and what kind of character is yours,” said Mr. Nicholls.

Uneasiness stirred in me; the rain and gusting wind seemed colder than a moment ago. “What was this man’s name?”

“He didn’t say.”

My uneasiness quickened into alarm. “Well, what did he look like?”

“I didn’t really notice.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing, of course. I don’t gossip to strangers.” Mr. Nicholls looked affronted.

There are people who have no notion of sketching a character or perceiving salient points of persons or things, and Mr. Nicholls belongs to this class. Would that he were as good at observation as he was discreet! Could the stranger be one of the men who had assaulted Anne and me on the train? I looked down Main Street towards the village green and the toll gate. Suddenly Haworth didn’t seem so isolated as before.

“Miss Bronte, I hope you’ve not been doing anything to attract improper attention from strange men,” Mr. Nicholls said in a tone of sententious concern. “As the daughter of a clergyman, you should be careful about your behavior, lest it reflect badly upon your father or the Church.”

How dare he assume I was at fault and tell me how to act? “You do seize upon any chance to sermonize.”

“Yes; it is my duty,” Mr. Nicholls said seriously, interpreting my tart rejoinder as praise.

It was a pity that Mr. Nicholls couldn’t be like Gilbert White, who’d cared more for my safety than about public opinion. Still, I knew Mr. Nicholls to be a good man, held in high regard by Papa and the parishioners. Perhaps Anne and Emily and I shouldn’t have stolen his middle name as our nom de plume, although we’d enjoyed our secret joke.

Afraid that I would say something regrettable if Mr. Nicholls and I continued together, I halted. “Here’s the post office. I must step inside.” I said firmly, “Goodbye, Mr. Nicholls,” entered the building, and left him standing alone in the rain.

Inside the post office, drawers and compartments lined the walls. Behind the counter sat the postmistress, Nancy Wills, a stubby woman with frizzy grey hair beneath her muslin cap.

“Oh, Miss Bronte,” she said, “I heard tha was back from London. It were a nice trip, I hope? I saw your pa the other day when he come from visitin’ the Oaks farm. They’ve got th’ fever there.”

More village gossip followed. When she paused for breath, I handed her my letter and said, “Is there any post for me?” As Nancy began searching through letters and parcels, a thought struck. “Has there been a stranger asking about me?”

“Matter of fact, there was,” Nancy said. “It were two days ago. A man were botherin’ me with all sorts of questions, like who do tha send letters to or get them from.”

I felt a ripple of foreboding. “You didn’t answer him, did you?”

Nancy’s cheeks flushed. “Nor me. I told him to mind his own business.” She turned away and mumbled, “I think I did see something for thee, Miss Bronte. Now where can it be?”

I shuddered to think that a murderer may have tapped her extensive store of knowledge about my family. “Can you describe the man?”

“Oh, he were a gentleman with black hair and city ways.” Nancy tittered. “Fair handsome, too.”

At least she had better powers of observation than did Mr. Nicholls, even if she lacked his discretion. The stranger could have been the dark man from the train. If he now knew where I lived, why had he not approached me?

While I stood stricken by fear, the postmistress exclaimed, “Oh! Here it is!”

She gave me a flat rectangular package that was approximately seven inches long, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. It had a London postmark, but no sender’s address. “Whoever could have sent thee a present?” she said with expectant curiosity.

My thoughts flew to Gilbert White. Had he gone back to London and from there sent Jane Eyre for me to inscribe? Would there be a letter? Happy anticipation replaced my earlier fear. I hurried home and shut myself into the room above the front hall. With trembling fingers I unwrapped the package.

A letter is a wondrous treasure. Letters from my friends and family had comforted me while I was away from home. The absence of letters caused terrible unhappiness; I once had waited three years for a letter that never arrived. This time, however, fortune had blessed me.

Inside the package was a book wrapped in the same brown paper as the entire parcel-I could feel the curved spine and the edges of the binding. A sheet of white paper bearing a few lines of script accompanied the book. As I eagerly read the letter, anticipation turned to shock. Dear Miss Bronte, Forgive me for initiating a correspondence which you did not authorize and may not welcome. But I am in desperate straits, and I must presume upon you. Enclosed is a package. I beg you to deliver it, unopened, to my mother, Mrs. Mary White, 20 Eastbrook Terrace, Bradford, Yorkshire. Thank you for your kindness. I hope I will be able to repay it someday.

Isabel White