Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle Part 28

TO MISS CHARLOTTE BRONTE

'WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND.

'DEAR CHARLOTTE,--I have set up shop! I am delighted with it as a whole--that is, it is as pleasant or as little disagreeable as you can expect an employment to be that you earn your living by. The best of it is that your labour has some return, and you are not forced to work on hopelessly without result. _Du reste_, it is very odd. I keep looking at myself with one eye while I'm using the other, and I sometimes find myself in very queer positions.

Yesterday I went along the sh.o.r.e past the wharfes and several warehouses on a street where I had never been before during all the five years I have been in Wellington. I opened the door of a long place filled with packages, with pa.s.sages up the middle, and a row of high windows on one side. At the far end of the room a man was writing at a desk beneath a window. I walked all the length of the room very slowly, for what I had come for had completely gone out of my head. Fortunately the man never heard me until I had recollected it. Then he got up, and I asked him for some stone-blue, saltpetre, tea, pickles, salt, etc. He was very civil. I bought some things and asked for a note of them. He went to his desk again; I looked at some newspapers lying near. On the top was a circular from Smith & Elder containing notices of the most important new works. The first and longest was given to _Shirley_, a book I had seen mentioned in the _Manchester Examiner_ as written by Currer Bell. I blushed all over. The man got up, folding the note. I pulled it out of his hand and set off to the door, looking odder than ever, for a partner had come in and was watching. The clerk said something about sending them, and I said something too--I hope it was not very silly--and took my departure.

'I have seen some extracts from _Shirley_ in which you talk of women working. And this first duty, this great necessity, you seem to think that some women may indulge in, if they give up marriage, and don't make themselves too disagreeable to the other s.e.x. You are a coward and a traitor. A woman who works is by that alone better than one who does not; and a woman who does not happen to be rich and who _still_ earns no money and does not wish to do so, is guilty of a great fault, almost a crime--a dereliction of duty which leads rapidly and almost certainly to all manner of degradation. It is very wrong of you to _plead_ for toleration for workers on the ground of their being in peculiar circ.u.mstances, and few in number or singular in disposition. Work or degradation is the lot of all except the very small number born to wealth.

'Ellen is with me, or I with her. I cannot tell how our shop will turn out, but I am as sanguine as ever. Meantime we certainly amuse ourselves better than if we had nothing to do. We _like_ it, and that's the truth. By the _Cornelia_ we are going to send our sketches and fern leaves. You must look at them, and it will need all your eyes to understand them, for they are a ma.s.s of confusion.

They are all within two miles of Wellington, and some of them rather like--Ellen's sketch of me especially. During the last six months I have seen more "society" than in all the last four years. Ellen is half the reason of my being invited, and my improved circ.u.mstances besides. There is no one worth mentioning particularly. The women are all ignorant and narrow, and the men selfish. They are of a decent, honest kind, and some intelligent and able. A Mr. Woodward is the only _literary_ man we know, and he seems to have fair sense.

This was the clerk I bought the stone-blue of. We have just got a mechanic's inst.i.tute, and weekly lectures delivered there. It is amusing to see people trying to find out whether or not it is fashionable and proper to patronise it. Somehow it seems it is. I think I have told you all this before, which shows I have got to the end of my news. Your next letter to me ought to bring me good news, more cheerful than the last. You will somehow get drawn out of your hole and find interests among your fellow-creatures. Do you know that living among people with whom you have not the slightest interest in common is just like living alone, or worse? Ellen Nussey is the only one you can talk to, that I know of at least. Give my love to her and to Miss Wooler, if you have the opportunity. I am writing this on just such a night as you will likely read it--rain and storm, coming winter, and a glowing fire. Ours is on the ground, wood, no fender or irons; no matter, we are very comfortable.

'PAG.'

TO MISS CHARLOTTE BRONTE

'WELLINGTON, N. Z., _April_ 3_rd_, 1850.

'DEAR CHARLOTTE,--About a week since I received your last melancholy letter with the account of Anne's death and your utter indifference to everything, even to the success of your last book. Though you do not say this, it is pretty plain to be seen from the style of your letter. It seems to me hard indeed that you who would succeed, better than any one, in making friends and keeping them, should be condemned to solitude from your poverty. To no one would money bring more happiness, for no one would use it better than you would. For me, with my headlong self-indulgent habits, I am perhaps better without it, but I am convinced it would give you great and n.o.ble pleasures. Look out then for success in writing; you ought to care as much for that as you do for going to Heaven. Though the advantages of being employed appear to you now the best part of the business, you will soon, please G.o.d, have other enjoyments from your success. Railway shares will rise, your books will sell, and you will acquire influence and power; and then most certainly you will find something to use it in which will interest you and make you exert yourself.

'I have got into a heap of social trickery since Ellen came, never having troubled my head before about the comparative numbers of young ladies and young gentlemen. To Ellen it is quite new to be of such importance by the mere fact of her femininity. She thought she was coming wofully down in the world when she came out, and finds herself better received than ever she was in her life before. And the cla.s.s are not _in education_ inferior, though they are in money. They are decent well-to-do people: six grocers, one draper, two parsons, two clerks, two lawyers, and three or four nondescripts. All these but one have families to "take tea with," and there are a lot more single men to flirt with. For the last three months we have been out every Sunday sketching. We seldom succeed in making the slightest resemblance to the thing we sit down to, but it is wonderfully interesting. Next year we hope to send a lot home. With all this my novel stands still; it might have done so if I had had nothing to do, for it is not want of time but want of freedom of mind that makes me unable to direct my attention to it. Meantime it grows in my head, for I never give up the idea. I have written about a volume I suppose. Read this letter to Ellen Nussey.

'MARY TAYLOR.'

TO MISS CHARLOTTE BRONTE

'WELLINGTON, _August_ 13_th_, 1850.

'DEAR CHARLOTTE,--After waiting about six months we have just got _Shirley_. It was landed from the _Constantinople_ on Monday afternoon, just in the thick of our preparations for a "small party"

for the next day. We stopped spreading red blankets over everything (New Zealand way of arranging the room) and opened the box and read all the letters. Soyer's _Housewife_ and _Shirley_ were there all right, but Miss Martineau's book was not. In its place was a silly child's tale called _Edward Orland_. On Tuesday we stayed up dancing till three or four o'clock, what for I can't imagine. However, it was a piece of business done. On Wednesday I began _Shirley_ and continued in a curious confusion of mind till now, princ.i.p.ally at the handsome foreigner who was nursed in our house when I was a little girl. By the way, you've put him in the servant's bedroom. You make us all talk much as I think we should have done if we'd ventured to speak at all. What a little lump of perfection you've made me!

There is a strange feeling in reading it of hearing us all talking.

I have not seen the matted hall and painted parlour windows so plain these five years. But my father is not like. He hates well enough and perhaps loves too, but he is not honest enough. It was from my father I learnt not to marry for money nor to tolerate any one who did, and he never would advise any one to do so, or fail to speak with contempt of those who did. Shirley is much more interesting than Jane Eyre, who never interests you at all until she has something to suffer. All through this last novel there is so much more life and stir that it leaves you far more to remember than the other. Did you go to London about this too? What for? I see by a letter of yours to Mr. Dixon that you _have_ been. I wanted to contradict some of your opinions, now I can't. As to when I'm coming home, you may well ask. I have wished for fifteen years to begin to earn my own living; last April I began to try--it is too soon to say yet with what success. I am woefully ignorant, terribly wanting in tact, and obstinately lazy, and almost too old to mend. Luckily there is no other dance for me, so I must work. Ellen takes to it kindly, it gratifies a deep ardent _wish_ of hers as of mine, and she is habitually industrious. For _her_, ten years younger, our shop will be a blessing. She may possibly secure an independence, and skill to keep it and use it, before the prime of life is past. As to my writings, you may as well ask the Fates about that too. I can give you no information. I write a page now and then. I never forget or get strange to what I have written. When I read it over it looks very interesting.

'MARY TAYLOR.'

The Ellen Taylor referred to so frequently was, as I have said, a cousin of Mary's. Her early death in New Zealand gives the single letter I have of hers a more pathetic interest.

TO MISS CHARLOTTE BRONTE

'WELLINGTON, N. Z.

'MY DEAR MISS BRONTE,--I shall tell you everything I can think of, since you said in one of your letters to Pag that you wished me to write to you. I have been here a year. It seems a much shorter time, and yet I have thought more and done more than I ever did in my life before. When we arrived, Henry and I were in such a hurry to leave the ship that we didn't wait to be fetched, but got into the first boat that came alongside. When we landed we inquired where Waring lived, but hadn't walked far before we met him. I had never seen him before, but he guessed we were the cousins he expected, so caught us and took us along with him. Mary soon joined us, and we went home together. At first I thought Mary was not the least altered, but when I had seen her for about a week I thought she looked rather older. The first night Mary and I sat up till 2 A.M.

talking. Mary and I settled we would do something together, and we talked for a fortnight before we decided whether we would have a school or shop; it ended in favour of the shop. Waring thought we had better be quiet, and I believe he still thinks we are doing it for amus.e.m.e.nt; but he never refuses to help us. He is teaching us book-keeping, and he buys things for us now and then. Mary gets as fierce as a dragon and goes to all the wholesale stores and looks at things, gets patterns, samples, etc., and asks prices, and then comes home, and we talk it over; and then she goes again and buys what we want. She says the people are always civil to her. Our keeping shop astonishes every body here; I believe they think we do it for fun.

Some think we shall make nothing of it, or that we shall get tired; and all laugh at us. Before I left home I used to be afraid of being laughed at, but now it has very little effect upon me.

'Mary and I are settled together now: I can't do without Mary and she couldn't get on by herself. I built the house we live in, and we made the plan ourselves, so it suits us. We take it in turns to serve in the shop, and keep the accounts, and do the housework--I mean, Mary takes the shop for a week and I the kitchen, and then we change. I think we shall do very well if no more severe earthquakes come, and if we can prevent fire. When a wooden house takes fire it doesn't stop; and we have got an oil cask about as high as I am, that would help it. If some sparks go out at the chimney-top the shingles are in danger. The last earthquake but one about a fortnight ago threw down two medicine bottles that were standing on the table and made other things jingle, but did no damage. If we have nothing worse than that I don't care, but I don't want the chimney to come down--it would cost 10 pounds to build it up again. Mary is making me stop because it is nearly 9 P.M. and we are going to Waring's to supper. Good-bye.--Yours truly,

'ELLEN TAYLOR.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _July_ 4_th_, 1849.

'I get on as well as I can. Home is not the home it used to be--that you may well conceive; but so far, I get on.

'I cannot boast of vast benefits derived from change of air yet; but unfortunately I brought back the seeds of a cold with me from that dismal Easton, and I have not got rid of it yet. Still I think I look better than I did before I went. How are you? You have never told me.

'Mr. Williams has written to me twice since my return, chiefly on the subject of his third daughter, who wishes to be a governess, and has some chances of a presentation to Queen's College, an establishment connected with the Governess Inst.i.tution; this will secure her four years of instruction. He says Mr. George Smith is kindly using his influence to obtain votes, but there are so many candidates he is not sanguine of success.

'I had a long letter from Mary Taylor--interesting but sad, because it contained many allusions to those who are in this world no more.

She mentioned you, and seemed impressed with an idea of the lamentable nature of your unoccupied life. She spoke of her own health as being excellent.

'Give my love to your mother and sisters, and,--Believe me, yours,

'C. B.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _May_ 18_th_.

'DEAR ELLEN,--I inclose Mary Taylor's letter announcing Ellen's death, and two last letters--sorrowful doc.u.ments, all of them. I received them this morning from Hunsworth without any note or directions where to send them, but I think, if I mistake not, Amelia in a previous note told me to transmit them to you.--Yours faithfully,

'C. B.'

TO MISS CHARLOTTE BRONTE

'WELLINGTON, N. Z.

'DEAR CHARLOTTE,--I began a letter to you one bitter cold evening last week, but it turned out such a sad one that I have left it and begun again. I am sitting all alone in my own house, or rather what is to be mine when I've paid for it. I bought it of Henry when Ellen died--shop and all, and carry on by myself. I have made up my mind not to get any a.s.sistance. I have not too much work, and the annoyance of having an unsuitable companion was too great to put up with without necessity. I find now that it was Ellen that made me so busy, and without her to nurse I have plenty of time. I have begun to keep the house very tidy; it makes it less desolate. I take great interest in my trade--as much as I could do in anything that was not _all_ pleasure. But the best part of my life is the excitement of arrivals from England. Reading all the news, written and printed, is like living another life quite separate from this one. The old letters are strange--very, when I begin to read them, but quite familiar notwithstanding. So are all the books and newspapers, though I never see a human being to whom it would ever occur to me to mention anything I read in them. I see your _nom de guerre_ in them sometimes. I saw a criticism on the preface to the second edition of _Wuthering Heights_. I saw it among the notables who attended Thackeray's lectures. I have seen it somehow connected with Sir J.

K. Shuttleworth. Did he want to marry you, or only to lionise you?

_or was it somebody else_?

'Your life in London is a "new country" to me, which I cannot even picture to myself. You seem to like it--at least some things in it, and yet your late letters to Mrs. J. Taylor talk of low spirits and illness. "What's the matter with you now?" as my mother used to say, as if it were the twentieth time in a fortnight. It is really melancholy that now, in the prime of life, in the flush of your hard-earned prosperity, you can't be well. Did not Miss Martineau improve you? If she did, why not try her and her plan again? But I suppose if you had hope and energy to try, you would be well. Well, it's nearly dark and you will surely be well when you read this, so what's the use of writing? I should like well to have some details of your life, but how can I hope for it? I have often tried to give you a picture of mine, but I have not the skill. I get a heap of details, mostly paltry in themselves, and not enough to give you an idea of the whole. Oh, for one hour's talk! You are getting too far off and beginning to look strange to me. Do you look as you used to do, I wonder? What do you and Ellen Nussey talk about when you meet?

There! it's dark.

'_Sunday night_.--I have let the vessel go that was to take this. As there were others going soon I did not much care. I am in the height of cogitation whether to send for some worsted stockings, etc. They will come next year at this time, and who can tell what I shall want then, or shall be doing? Yet hitherto we have sent such orders, and have guessed or known pretty well what we should want. I have just been looking over a list of four pages long in Ellen's handwriting.

These things ought to come by the next vessel, or part of them at least. When tired of that I began to read some pages of "my book"

intending to write some more, but went on reading for pleasure. I often do this, and find it very interesting indeed. It does not get on fast, though I have written about one volume and a half. It's full of music, poverty, disputing, politics, and original views of life. I can't for the life of me bring the lover into it, nor tell what he's to do when he comes. Of the men generally I can never tell what they'll do next. The women I understand pretty well, and rare _traca.s.serie_ there is among them--they are perfectly _feminine_ in that respect at least.

'I am just now in a state of famine. No books and no news from England for this two months. I am thinking of visiting a circulating library from sheer dulness. If I had more time I should get melancholy. No one can prize activity more than I do. I never am long without it than a gloom comes over me. The cloud seems to be always there behind me, and never quite out of sight but when I keep on at a good rate. Fortunately, the more I work the better I like it. I shall take to scrubbing the floor before it's dirty and polishing pans on the outside in my old age. It is the only thing that gives me an appet.i.te for dinner.

'PAG.

'Give my love to Ellen Nussey.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'WELLINGTON, N. Z., 8_th_ _Jan_. 1857.