Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle Part 62

'DEAR ELLEN,--Can you come here on Wednesday week (Sept. 6th)? Try to arrange matters to do so if possible, for it will be better than to delay your visit till the days grow cold and short. I want to see you again, dear Nell, and my husband too will receive you with pleasure; and he is not diffuse of his courtesies or partialities, I can a.s.sure you. One friendly word from him means as much as twenty from most people.

'We have been busy lately giving a supper and tea-drinking to the singers, ringers, Sunday-school teachers, and all the scholars of the Sunday and National Schools, amounting in all to some 500 souls. It gave satisfaction and went off well.

'Papa, I am thankful to say, is much better; he preached last Sunday.

How does your mother bear this hot weather? Write soon, dear Nell, and say you will come.--Yours faithfully,

'C. B. N.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _September_ 7_th_, 1854.

'DEAR ELLEN,--I send a French paper to-day. You would almost think I had given them up, it is so long since one was despatched. The fact is, they had acc.u.mulated to quite a pile during my absence. I wished to look them over before sending them off, and as yet I have scarcely found time. That same Time is an article of which I once had a large stock always on hand; where it is all gone now it would be difficult to say, but my moments are very fully occupied. Take warning, Ellen, the married woman can call but a very small portion of each day her own. Not that I complain of this sort of monopoly as yet, and I hope I never shall incline to regard it as a misfortune, but it certainly exists. We were both disappointed that you could not come on the day I mentioned. I have grudged this splendid weather very much. The moors are in glory, I never saw them fuller of purple bloom. I wanted you to see them at their best; they are just turning now, and in another week, I fear, will be faded and sere. As soon as ever you can leave home, be sure to write and let me know.

'Papa continues greatly better. My husband flourishes; he begins indeed to express some slight alarm at the growing improvement in his condition. I think I am decent, better certainly than I was two months ago, but people don't compliment me as they do Arthur--excuse the name, it has grown natural to use it now. I trust, dear Nell, that you are all well at Brookroyd, and that your visiting stirs are pretty nearly over. I compa.s.sionate you from my heart for all the trouble to which you must be put, and I am rather ashamed of people coming sponging in that fashion one after another; get away from them and come here.--Yours faithfully,

'C. B. NICHOLLS.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _November_ 7_th_, 1854.

'DEAR ELLEN,--Arthur wishes you would burn my letters. He was out when I commenced this letter, but he has just come in. It is not "old friends" he mistrusts, he says, but the chances of war--the accidental pa.s.sing of letters into hands and under eyes for which they were never written.

'All this seems mighty amusing to me; it is a man's mode of viewing correspondence. Men's letters are proverbially uninteresting and uncommunicative. I never quite knew before why they made them so.

They may be right in a sense: strange chances do fall out certainly.

As to my own notes, I never thought of attaching importance to them or considering their fate, till Arthur seemed to reflect on both so seriously.

'I will write again next week if all be well to name a day for coming to see you. I am sure you want, or at least ought to have, a little rest before you are bothered with more company; but whenever I come, I suppose, dear Nell, under present circ.u.mstances, it will be a quiet visit, and that I shall not need to bring more than a plain dress or two. Tell me this when you write.--Believe me faithfully yours,

'C. B. NICHOLLS.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _November_ 14_th_, 1854.

'DEAR ELLEN,--I am only just at liberty to write to you; guests have kept me very busy during the last two or three days. Sir J.

Kay-Shuttleworth and a friend of his came here on Sat.u.r.day afternoon and stayed till after dinner on Monday.

'When I go to Brookroyd, Arthur will take me there and stay one night, but I cannot yet fix the time of my visit. Good-bye for the present, dear Nell.--Yours faithfully,

'C. B. NICHOLLS.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _November_ 21_st_, 1854,

'DEAR ELLEN,--You ask about Mr. Sowden's matter. He walked over here on a wild rainy day. We talked it over. He is quite disposed to entertain the proposal, but of course there must be close inquiry and ripe consideration before either he or the patron decide. Meantime Mr. Sowden {495} is most anxious that the affairs be kept absolutely quiet; in the event of disappointment it would be both painful and injurious to him if it should be rumoured at Hebden Bridge that he has had thoughts of leaving. Arthur says if a whisper gets out these things fly from parson to parson like wildfire. I cannot help somehow wishing that the matter should be arranged, if all on examination is found tolerably satisfactory.

'Papa continues pretty well, I am thankful to say; his deafness is wonderfully relieved. Winter seems to suit him better than summer; besides, he is settled and content, as I perceive with grat.i.tude to G.o.d.

'Dear Ellen, I wish you well through every trouble. Arthur is not in just now or he would send a kind message.--Believe me, yours faithfully,

'C. B. NICHOLLS.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _November_ 29_th_, 1854.

'DEAR ELLEN,--Arthur somewhat demurs about my going to Brookroyd as yet; fever, you know, is a formidable word. I cannot say I entertain any apprehensions myself further than this, that I should be terribly bothered at the idea of being taken ill from home and causing trouble; and strangers are sometimes more liable to infection than persons living in the house.

'Mr. Sowden has seen Sir J. K. Shuttleworth, but I fancy the matter is very uncertain as yet. It seems the Bishop of Manchester stipulates that the clergyman chosen should, if possible, be from his own diocese, and this, Arthur says, is quite right and just. An exception would have been made in Arthur's favour, but the case is not so clear with Mr. Sowden. However, no harm will have been done if the matter does not take wind, as I trust it will not. Write very soon, dear Nell, and,--Believe me, yours faithfully,

'C. B. NICHOLLS.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _December_ 7_th_, 1854.

'DEAR ELLEN,--I shall not get leave to go to Brookroyd before Christmas now, so do not expect me. For my own part I really should have no fear, and if it just depended on me I should come. But these matters are not quite in my power now: another must be consulted; and where his wish and judgment have a decided bias to a particular course, I make no stir, but just adopt it. Arthur is sorry to disappoint both you and me, but it is his fixed wish that a few weeks should be allowed yet to elapse before we meet. Probably he is confirmed in this desire by my having a cold at present. I did not achieve the walk to the waterfall with impunity. Though I changed my wet things immediately on returning home, yet I felt a chill afterwards, and the same night had sore throat and cold; however, I am better now, but not quite well.

'Did I tell you that our poor little Flossy is dead? He drooped for a single day, and died quietly in the night without pain. The loss even of a dog was very saddening, yet perhaps no dog ever had a happier life or an easier death.

'Papa continues pretty well, I am happy to say, and my dear boy flourishes. I do not mean that he continues to grow stouter, which one would not desire, but he keeps in excellent condition.

'You would wonder, I dare say, at the long disappearance of the French paper. I had got such an acc.u.mulation of them unread that I thought I would not wait to send the old ones; now you will receive them regularly. I am writing in haste. It is almost inexplicable to me that I seem so often hurried now; but the fact is, whenever Arthur is in I must have occupations in which he can share, or which will not at least divert my attention from him--thus a mult.i.tude of little matters get put off till he goes out, and then I am quite busy.

Goodbye, dear Ellen, I hope we shall meet soon.--Yours faithfully,

'C. B. NICHOLLS.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _December_ 26_th_, 1854.

'DEAR ELLEN,--I return the letter. It is, as you say, very genuine, truthful, affectionate, maternal--without a taint of sham or exaggeration. Mary will love her child without spoiling it, I think.

She does not make an uproar about her happiness either. The longer I live the more I suspect exaggerations. I fancy it is sometimes a sort of fashion for each to vie with the other in protestations about their wonderful felicity, and sometimes they--FIB. I am truly glad to hear you are all better at Brookroyd. In the course of three or four weeks more I expect to get leave to come to you. I certainly long to see you again. One circ.u.mstance reconciles me to this delay--the weather. I do not know whether it has been as bad with you as with us, but here for three weeks we have had little else than a succession of hurricanes.

'In your last you asked about Mr. Sowden and Sir James. I fear Mr.

Sowden has little chance of the living; he had heard nothing more of it the last time he wrote to Arthur, and in a note he had from Sir James yesterday the subject is not mentioned.

'You inquire too after Mrs. Gaskell. She has not been here, and I think I should not like her to come now till summer. She is very busy with her story of _North and South_.

'I must make this note short that it may not be overweight. Arthur joins me in sincere good wishes for a happy Christmas, and many of them to you and yours. He is well, thank G.o.d, and so am I, and he is "my dear boy," certainly dearer now than he was six months ago. In three days we shall actually have been married that length of time!

Good-bye, dear Nell.--Yours faithfully,

'C. B. NICHOLLS.'

At the beginning of 1855 Mr. and Mrs. Nicholls visited Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth at Gawthorpe. I know of only four letters by her, written in this year.