Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle Part 32

'CHARIVARI.'

He would seem to have been a much teased curate. Now it is Miss Ellen Nussey, now a Miss Agnes Walton, who is supposed to be the object of his devotion.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_April_ 9_th_, 1840.

'MY DEAR MRS. MENELAUS,--I think I am exceedingly good to write to you so soon, indeed I am quite afraid you will begin to consider me intrusive with my frequent letters. I ought by right to let an interval of a quarter of a year elapse between each communication, and I will, in time; never fear me. I shall improve in procrastination as I get older.

'My hand is trembling like that of an old man, so I don't expect you will be able to read my writing; never mind, put the letter by and I'll read it to you the next time I see you.

'I have been painting a portrait of Agnes Walton for our friend Miss Celia Amelia. You would laugh to see how his eyes sparkle with delight when he looks at it, like a pretty child pleased with a new plaything. Good-bye to you. Let me have no more of your humbug about Cupid, etc. You know as well as I do it is all groundless trash.

'C. BRONTE.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_August_ 20_th_, 1840.

'DEAR MRS. ELLEN,--I was very well pleased with your capital long letter. A better farce than the whole affair of that letter-opening (ducks and Mr. Weightman included) was never imagined. {282} By-the-bye, speaking of Mr. W., I told you he was gone to pa.s.s his examination at Ripon six weeks ago. He is not come back yet, and what has become of him we don't know. Branwell has received one letter since he went, speaking rapturously of Agnes Walton, describing certain b.a.l.l.s at which he had figured, and announcing that he had been twice over head and ears desperately in love. It is my devout belief that his reverence left Haworth with the fixed intention of never returning. If he does return, it will be because he has not been able to get a "living." Haworth is not the place for him. He requires novelty, a change of faces, difficulties to be overcome. He pleases so easily that he soon gets weary of pleasing at all. He ought not to have been a parson; certainly he ought not.

Our _august_ relations, as you choose to call them, are gone back to London. They never stayed with us, they only spent one day at our house. Have you seen anything of the Miss Woolers lately? I wish they, or somebody else, would get me a situation. I have answered advertis.e.m.e.nts without number, but my applications have met with no success.

'CALIBAN.'

One wonders if a single letter by Charlotte Bronte applying for a 'situation' has been preserved! I have not seen one.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_September_ 29_th_, 1840.

'I know Mrs. Ellen is burning with eagerness to hear something about William Weightman. I think I'll plague her by not telling her a word. To speak heaven's truth, I have precious little to say, inasmuch as I seldom see him, except on a Sunday, when he looks as handsome, cheery, and good-tempered as usual. I have indeed had the advantage of one long conversation since his return from Westmorland, when he poured out his whole warm fickle soul in fondness and admiration of Agnes Walton. Whether he is in love with her or not I can't say; I can only observe that it sounds very like it. He sent us a prodigious quant.i.ty of game while he was away--a brace of wild ducks, a brace of black grouse, a brace of partridges, ditto of snipes, ditto of curlews, and a large salmon. If you were to ask Mr.

Weightman's opinion of my character just now, he would say that at first he thought me a cheerful chatty kind of body, but that on farther acquaintance he found me of a capricious changeful temper, never to be reckoned on. He does not know that I have regulated my manner by his--that I was cheerful and chatty so long as he was respectful, and that when he grew almost contemptuously familiar I found it necessary to adopt a degree of reserve which was not natural, and therefore was very painful to me. I find this reserve very convenient, and consequently I intend to keep it up.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_November_ 12_th_, 1840.

'MY DEAR NELL,--You will excuse this scrawled sheet of paper, inasmuch as I happen to be out of that article, this being the only available sheet I can find in my desk. I have effaced one of the delectable portraitures, but have spared the others--lead pencil sketches of horse's head, and man's head--being moved to that act of clemency by the recollection that they are not the work of my hand, but of the sacred fingers of his reverence William Weightman. You will discern that the eye is a little too elevated in the horse's head, otherwise I can a.s.sure you it is no such bad attempt. It shows taste and something of an artist's eye. The fellow had no copy for it. He sketched it, and one or two other little things, when he happened to be here one evening, but you should have seen the vanity with which he afterwards regarded his productions. One of them represented the flying figure of Fame inscribing his own name on the clouds.

'Mrs. Brook and I have interchanged letters. She expressed herself pleased with the style of my application--with its candour, etc. (I took care to tell her that if she wanted a showy, elegant, fashionable personage, I was not the man for her), but she wants music and singing. I can't give her music and singing, so of course the negotiation is null and void. Being once up, however, I don't mean to sit down till I have got what I want; but there is no sense in talking about unfinished projects, so we'll drop the subject.

Consider this last sentence a hint from me to be applied practically.

It seems Miss Wooler's school is in a consumptive state of health. I have been endeavouring to obtain a reinforcement of pupils for her, but I cannot succeed, because Mrs. Heap is opening a new school in Bradford.

'C. BRONTE.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_January_ 10_th_, 1841.

'MY DEAR ELLEN,--I promised to write to you, and therefore I must keep my promise, though I have neither much to say nor much time to say it in.

'Mary Taylor's visit has been a very pleasant one to us, and I believe to herself also. She and Mr. Weightman have had several games at chess, which generally terminated in a species of mock hostility. Mr. Weightman is better in health; but don't set your heart on him, I'm afraid he is very fickle--not to you in particular, but to half a dozen other ladies. He has just cut his _inamorata_ at Swansea, and sent her back all her letters. His present object of devotion is Caroline Dury, to whom he has just despatched a most pa.s.sionate copy of verses. Poor lad, his sanguine temperament bothers him grievously.

'That Swansea affair seems to me somewhat heartless as far as I can understand it, though I have not heard a very clear explanation. He sighs as much as ever. I have not mentioned your name to him yet, nor do I mean to do so until I have a fair opportunity of gathering his real mind. Perhaps I may never mention it at all, but on the contrary carefully avoid all allusion to you. It will just depend upon the further opinion I may form of his character. I am not pleased to find that he was carrying on a regular correspondence with this lady at Swansea all the time he was paying such pointed attention to you; and now the abrupt way in which he has cut her off, and the evident wandering instability of his mind is no favourable symptom at all. I shall not have many opportunities of observing him for a month to come. As for the next fortnight, he will be sedulously engaged in preparing for his ordination, and the fortnight after he will spend at Appleby and Crackenthorp with Mr. and Miss Walton. Don't think about him; I am not afraid you will break your heart, but don't think about him.

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

'CA'IRA.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'RAWDON, _March_ 3_rd_, 1841.

'MY DEAR ELLEN,--I dare say you have received a valentine this year from our bonny-faced friend the curate of Haworth. I got a precious specimen a few days before I left home, but I knew better how to treat it than I did those we received a year ago. I am up to the dodges and artifices of his lordship's character. He knows I know him, and you cannot conceive how quiet and respectful he has long been. Mind I am not writing against him--I never _will_ do that. I like him very much. I honour and admire his generous, open disposition, and sweet temper--but for all the tricks, wiles, and insincerities of love, the gentleman has not his match for twenty miles round. He would fain persuade every woman under thirty whom he sees that he is desperately in love with her. I have a great deal more to say, but I have not a moment's time to write it in. My dear Ellen, _do_ write to me soon, don't forget.--Good-bye.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_March_ 21_st_, 1841.

'MY DEAREST ELLEN,--I do not know how to wear your pretty little handcuffs. When you come you shall explain the mystery. I send you the precious valentine. Make much of it. Remember the writer's blue eyes, auburn hair, and rosy cheeks. You may consider the concern addressed to yourself, for I have no doubt he intended it to suit anybody.

'Fare-thee-well.

'C. B.'

Then there are these slighter inferences, that concerning Anne being particularly interesting.

'Write long letters to me, and tell me everything you can think of, and about everybody. "His young reverence," as you tenderly call him, is looking delicate and pale; poor thing, don't you pity him? I do from my heart! When he is well, and fat, and jovial, I never think of him, but when anything ails him I am always sorry. He sits opposite to Anne at church, sighing softly, and looking out of the corners of his eyes to win her attention, and Anne is so quiet, her look so downcast, they are a picture.'

'_July_ 19_th_, 1841.

'Our revered friend, W. W., is quite as bonny, pleasant, lighthearted, good-tempered, generous, careless, fickle, and unclerical as ever. He keeps up his correspondence with Agnes Walton. During the last spring he went to Appleby, and stayed upwards of a month.'

During the governess and Brussels episodes in Charlotte's life we lose sight of Mr. Weightman, and the next record is of his death, which took place in September 1842, while Charlotte and Emily were in Brussels. Mr.

Bronte preached the funeral sermon, {287} stating by way of introduction that for the twenty years and more that he had been in Haworth he had never before read his sermon. 'This is owing to a conviction in my mind,' he says, 'that in general, for the ordinary run of hearers, extempore preaching, though accompanied with some peculiar disadvantages, is more likely to be of a colloquial nature, and better adapted, on the whole, to the majority.' His departure from the practice on this occasion, he explains, is due to the request that his sermon should be printed.

Mr. Weightman, he told his hearers, was a native of Westmoreland, educated at the University of Durham. 'While he was there,' continued Mr. Bronte, 'I applied to the justly venerated Apostolical Bishop of this diocese, requesting his Lordship to send me a curate adequate to the wants and wishes of the parishioners. This application was not in vain.

Our Diocesan, in the scriptural character of the Overlooker and Head of his clergy, made an admirable choice, which more than answered my expectations, and probably yours. The Church Pastoral Aid Society, in their pious liberality, lent their pecuniary aid, without which all efforts must have failed.' 'He had cla.s.sical attainments of the first order, and, above all, his religious principles were sound and orthodox,'

concludes Mr. Bronte. Mr. Weightman was twenty-six years of age when he died. His successor was Mr. Peter Augustus Smith, whom Charlotte Bronte has made famous in _Shirley_ as Mr. Malone, curate of Briarfield. Mr.

Smith was Mr. A. B. Nicholls's predecessor at Haworth. Here is Charlotte Bronte's vigorous treatment of him in a letter to her friend.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_January_ 26_th_, 1844.

'DEAR NELL,--We were all very glad to get your letter this morning.

_We_, I say, as both papa and Emily were anxious to hear of the safe arrival of yourself and the little _varmint_. {288}

'As you conjecture, Emily and I set to shirt-making the very day after you left, and we have stuck to it pretty closely ever since.