The Bronte Family Volume I Part 10

'"Long years have never worn away The unnatural strangeness of that day, When I beheld--upon the plate Of grim death's mockery of state-- That well-known word, that long-loved name, Now but remembered like the dream Of half-forgotten hymns divine, My sister's name--my Caroline!

Down, down, they lowered her, sad and slow, Into her narrow house below: And deep, indeed, appeared to be That one glimpse of eternity, Where, cut from life, corruption lay, Where beauty soon should turn to clay!

Though scarcely conscious, hotly fell The drops that spoke my last farewell; And wild my sob, when hollow rung The first cold clod above her flung, When glitter was to turn to rust, 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!'

'"How bitter seemed that moment when, Earth's ceremonies o'er, We from the filled grave turned again To leave her evermore; And, when emerging from the cold Of damp, sepulchral air, As I turned, listless to behold The evening fresh and fair, How sadly seemed to smile the face Of the descending sun!

How seemed as if his latest race Were with that evening run!

There sank his...o...b..behind the grove Of my ancestral home, With heaven's unbounded vault above To canopy his tomb.

Yet lingering sadly and serene, As for his last farewell, To shine upon those wild woods green O'er which he'd loved to dwell.

'"I lost him, and the silent room, Where soon at rest I lay, Began to darken, 'neath the gloom Of twilight's dull decay; So, sobbing as my heart would break, And blind with gushing eyes, Hours seemed whole nights to me awake, And day as 'twould not rise.

I almost prayed that I might die-- But then the thought would come That, if I did, my corpse must lie In yonder dismal tomb; Until, methought, I saw its stone, By moonshine glistening clear, While Caroline's bright form alone Kept silent watching there: All white with angel's wings she seemed, And indistinct to see; But when the unclouded moonlight beamed I saw her beckon me, And fade, thus beckoning, while the wind Around that midnight wall, To me--now lingering years behind-- Seemed then my sister's call!

'"And thus it brought me back the hours When we, at rest together, Used to lie listening to the showers Of wild December weather; Which, when, as oft, they woke in her The chords of inward thought, Would fill with pictures that wild air, From far off memories brought; So, while I lay, I heard again Her silver-sounding tongue, Rehearsing some remembered strain Of old times long agone!

And, flashed across my spirit's sight, What she had often told me-- When, laid awake on Christmas night, Her sheltering arms would fold me-- About that midnight-seeming day, Whose gloom o'er Calvary thrown, Showed trembling Nature's deep dismay At what her sons had done: When sacred Salem's murky air Was riven with the cry, Which told the world how mortals dare The Immortal crucify; When those who, sorrowing, sat afar, With aching heart and eye, Beheld their great Redeemer there, 'Mid sneers and scoffings die; When all His earthly vigour fled, When thirsty faintness bowed His head, When His pale limbs were moistened o'er With deathly dews and dripping gore, When quivered all His worn-out frame, As Death, triumphant, quenched life's flame, When upward gazed His glazing eyes To those tremendous-seeming skies, When burst His cry of agony-- 'My G.o.d!--my G.o.d!--hast Thou forsaken me!'

My youthful feelings startled then, As if the temple, rent in twain, Horribly pealing on my ear With its deep thunder note of fear, Wrapping the world in general gloom, As if her G.o.d's were Nature's tomb; While sheeted ghosts before my gaze Pa.s.sed, flitting 'mid the dreary maze, As if rejoicing at the day When death--their king--o'er Heaven had sway.

In glistening charnel damps arrayed, They seemed to gibber round my head, Through night's drear void directing me Toward still and solemn Calvary, Where gleamed that cross with steady shine Around the thorn-crowned head divine-- A flaming cross--a beacon light To this world's universal night!

It seemed to shine with such a glow, And through my spirit piercing so, That, pantingly, I strove to cry For her, whom I thought slumbered by, And hide me from that awful shine In the embrace of Caroline!

I wakened in the attempt--'twas day; The troubled dream had fled away; 'Twas day--and I, alone, was laid In that great room and stately bed; No Caroline beside me! Wide And unrelenting swept the tide Of death 'twixt her and me!"

There paused Sweet Harriet's voice, for such thoughts caused--'

This poem springs from the deepest feelings, and from sorrows the most poignant. The respective images, tinctured with grief and despondency, pa.s.s before us with weird and vivid reality; and many of the pa.s.sages are imbued with great tenderness, beauty, and pathos.

The painful, and, perhaps, too morbid intensity of some of the pictures, whether of dreams or realities, is painted here with the skill of no common artist, whatever youthful defects may be observed in the composition. The poem is one more notable for tender sweetness than any other that remains from Branwell; but it lacks in places the vigour and power of his later compositions, and is, in several parts, of unequal merit. In the earlier portion of it, where he a.s.sumes the iambic measure, it is not difficult to perceive the influence of Byron on his diction. In this work Branwell again recurs to the time when tears of anguish flowed from his yet 'unhardened heart,' whose present woes are forgotten in the swelling thoughts of 'things gone by.' We recognize with what pathetic feeling he paints in Caroline all the qualities of instructress, guardian, and friend, which had characterized his sister Maria. Long afterwards Charlotte Bronte, inspired by similar feelings, devoted the first chapters of 'Jane Eyre' to a delineation, in the character of Helen Burns, of the disposition of her dead sister, whose death, a few days after her return from Cowan Bridge, she could scarcely ever either forget or forgive.

CHAPTER XV.

EVENTS AT THE PARSONAGE.

Charlotte's first Offer of Marriage--Her Remarks concerning it-- A second Offer Declined--Anne a Governess--She Moralizes upon it--Charlotte obtains a Situation--Unsuited to Her--She Leaves it--Branwell takes Pleasure in Scenery--He Visits Liverpool with his Friends--Charlotte goes to Easton--Curates at Haworth--Their Visits to the Parsonage--Public Meetings on Church Rates--Charlotte's Attempt at a Richardsonian Novel--She sends the Commencement of it to Wordsworth for his Opinion--Branwell receives an Appointment as Private Tutor.

After the return of Charlotte and Anne from Dewsbury Moor, whither Miss Wooler had removed her school, the three sisters were at home together for some months, and, in this happy, unrestrained intercourse, with their literary relaxations and their plans for the future, Charlotte's mind expanded, and her strength returned. There was Branwell, too, to think about; his venture at Bradford and his progress with his portraits. Then they would have to go and see the likeness of Mr. Morgan; and, on such occasions, Branwell would have much to say of art and literature, and, acquaintances. But Branwell was usually at Haworth on Sundays, and then he would hear of Charlotte's visits to her friends, and her adventures on these occasions. It was shortly before the date of Branwell's return from Bradford, in the spring of 1839, that Charlotte received her first offer of marriage. A young clergyman, who had, as Mrs. Gaskell thought, some resemblance to the St. John in the last volume of 'Jane Eyre,' had evidently been attracted by Charlotte Bronte; but matrimony does not seem, at the time, to have seriously entered into her thoughts. In some respects the proposal might have had strong temptations for her, and she thought how happy her married life might be. However, it was not the way with Charlotte Bronte to take the path of smoothness and comfort, and leave the th.o.r.n.y one untrod; and she asked herself if she loved the clergyman in question as much as a woman should love her husband, and whether she was the one best qualified to make him happy. 'Alas!' she says, 'my conscience answered "No" to both these questions.' She knew very well that she had a 'kindly leaning' towards him, but this was not enough for her, for it was impossible that she could ever feel for him such an intense attachment as would make her sacrifice her life for him.

Short of such a devotion awakened in herself, she would never marry anyone. Her comment is characteristic: 'Ten to one I shall never have the chance again; but _n'importe_.'

Charlotte Bronte felt that there was a want of sympathy between the young clergyman and herself, for he was a 'grave, quiet young man;'

and she knew that he would be startled, and would think her a wild, romantic enthusiast, when she showed her character, and laughed, and satirized, and said whatever came into her head. Nor was her next offer any more to her taste; for, within a few months, a neighbouring curate, a young Irishman, fresh from the Dublin University, made her a proposal. The circ.u.mstance amused Charlotte, for it was, on his part, a case of love at first sight. He came with his vicar to be introduced to the family, and was speedily struck with Mr. Bronte's daughter. Charlotte was never troubled at home with the _mauvaise honte_ that troubled her abroad; and so she talked and jested with the clergyman, and was much amused at the originality of his character. A pleasant afternoon was spent, for he made himself at home, after the fashion of his countrymen, and was witty, lively, ardent, and clever; but, withal, wanting in the dignity and discretion of an Englishman. As the evening drew on, Charlotte was not much pleased with the spice of Hibernian flattery with which he began to season his discourse, and, as she expresses it, she 'cooled a little.' The vicar and his curate went away; but what was Charlotte's astonishment to receive a letter next morning from the latter containing a proposal of marriage, and filled with ardent expressions of devotion! 'I hope you are laughing heartily,' she says to her friend. 'This is not like one of my adventures, is it? It more nearly resembles Martha's. I am certainly doomed to be an old maid.

Never mind. I have made up my mind to that fate ever since I was twelve years old. Well! thought I, I have heard of love at first sight, but this beats all! I leave you to guess what my answer would be, convinced that you will not do me the injustice of guessing wrong.'

Although the married state does not appear, from Charlotte's letters at this time, to have had many attractions for her, we know, from those she wrote later, and, perhaps, more than all from the concluding chapters of 'Jane Eyre,' that she could enter into the joys and sacrifices of domestic life, that she had a correct view of the affections, and knew how to appreciate conjugal love at its true value. But, in the present instances--although, at a later period of her life, when she was on the Continent, she is believed to have felt the full force of that 'pa.s.sion of the heart' which those about whom she wrote had failed to evoke--she declined to sever herself from the contented circ.u.mstances that surrounded her, and in which she was mistress, for a condition of doubtful peace and certain obedience.

Charlotte's decision was not discordant with the feelings of her family; for, as she had determined to continue at home, their plans for the future would not be disconcerted.

Anne was now resolved on making a trial of the life of a governess for herself, she having completed her education, and being wishful to exert herself as her sisters had done. Inquiries were made, and at length a situation was obtained. Anne continued in this kind of employment during the next six years, and it was her experience that suggested to her the subject of her first novel, 'Agnes Grey.' If we may suppose that she has recounted her own experience at this time, where her heroine describes the circ.u.mstances of her preparation and departure for her first situation, it would appear that she had some difficulty in convincing her friends of the wisdom of her purpose.

Agnes Grey says, after she has made the suggestion to her family:

'I was silenced for that day, and for many succeeding ones; but still I did not wholly relinquish my darling scheme. Mary got her drawing materials, and steadily set to work. I got mine too; but, while I drew, I thought of other things. How delightful it would be to be a governess! To go out into the world; to enter upon a new life; to act for myself; to exercise my unused faculties; to try my unknown powers; to earn my own maintenance, and something to comfort and help my father, mother, and sister, besides exonerating them from the provision of my food and clothing; to show papa what his little Agnes could do; to convince mamma and Mary that I was not quite the helpless, thoughtless being they supposed. And then, how charming to be entrusted with the care and education of children! Whatever others said, I felt I was fully competent to the task: the clear remembrance of my own thoughts in early childhood would be a surer guide than the instructions of the most mature adviser. I had but to turn from my little pupils to myself at their age, and I should know at once how to win their confidence and affections; how to waken the contrition of the erring; how to embolden the timid and console the afflicted; how to make virtue practicable, instruction desirable, and religion lively and comprehensible.'[28]

[28] 'Agnes Grey,' chap. i.

Anne Bronte was of a milder and more cheerful temperament than her sisters; she had not the fire, the morbid feeling, or the mental force that characterized Charlotte, yet she had more of the initiatory faculty than she had hitherto received credit for. But her gentle nature, her confiding piety, her more equable temper, enabled her to succeed better in the circ.u.mstances she had chosen. She had her troubles, her timidity, and her diffidence to contend with, but she made life supportable and even happy. 'Agnes Grey' thus speaks of her departure, which we cannot doubt is the experience of Anne Bronte:

'Some weeks more were yet to be devoted to preparation. How long, how tedious those weeks appeared to me! Yet they were happy ones in the main, full of bright hopes and ardent expectations. With what peculiar pleasure I a.s.sisted at the making of my new clothes, and, subsequently, the packing of my trunks! But there was a feeling of bitterness mingling with the latter occupation too; and when it was done--when all was ready for my departure on the morrow, and the last night at home approached--a sudden anguish seemed to swell my heart.

My dear friends looked sad, and spoke so very kindly, that I could scarcely keep my heart from overflowing; but I still affected to be gay. I had taken my last ramble with Mary on the moors, my last walk in the garden and round the house ... I had played my last tune on the old piano, and sung my last song to papa, not the last, I hoped, but the last for what appeared to me a very long time.'[29]

[29] 'Agnes Grey,' chap. i.

Charlotte and Emily made themselves busy in a.s.sisting Anne with her preparations for departure, and they were very sad and apprehensive when she left them on Monday, April 15th, 1839. She went alone, at her own wish, thinking she could manage better if left to her own resources, and when her failings were unwitnessed by those whose hopes she wished to sustain. However, she wrote, expressing satisfaction with the place she had secured, for the lady of the house was very kind. She had two of the eldest girls under her charge, the children being confined to the nursery, with which she had no concern.

Charlotte, although remarking in a letter to her friend on the cleverness and sensibility with which Anne could express herself in epistolary correspondence, had some fear that, such was the natural diffidence of her manner, her mistress would sometimes believe her to have an impediment in her speech.

Charlotte's eagerness to obtain a situation was now so great that she does not seem to have considered well the step she was about to take, and she obtained one that was not satisfactory to her. It was in the family of a wealthy Yorkshire manufacturer; and we may well believe that the stylish surroundings of her employers differed materially from those of the family at Haworth. Here a large quant.i.ty of miscellaneous work was thrown on Charlotte, which displeased her and destroyed her comfort. In a letter to Emily, she says she is 'overwhelmed with oceans of needlework; yards of cambric to hem, muslin night-caps to make, etc.' She found the outside attractions of the house beautiful in 'pleasant woods, white paths, green lawns, and blue, sunshiny sky;' but these surroundings did not compensate for the humiliations which her situation imposed upon her, and her mistress and she did not like each other; so Charlotte did not return to the place after the July holidays of 1839.

Branwell was as yet unemployed, and he sought, and took much pleasure in the scenery, the events and circ.u.mstances of the hills and valleys of the West-Riding of Yorkshire, and was frequently from home. He went about the country, a.s.sociating with the people, and revelling in their ready wit, which enabled him afterwards, by such observations and experience, to give vivid pictures of life and character. At the time of the Haworth 'Rushbearing,' of July, 1839, he visited Liverpool with one or two friends, and, while there, in compliance with an injunction of his father, made a stenographic report, at St.

Jude's church, of a sermon by the Rev. H. McNeile, the well-known evangelical preacher. Here, a sudden attack of Tic compelled him to resort to opium, in some form, as an anodyne, whose soothing effect in pain he had previously known. Subsequently, pa.s.sing a music shop, in one of their rambles through the town, Branwell's attention was arrested by a copy of the oratorio of 'Samson,' by Handel, displayed in the window, the performance of which had always excited him to the highest degree, and he eagerly besought his friend to purchase it, as well as some Ma.s.s, and various oratorio music, which was done.

On their return from Liverpool, Branwell, being under some obligation to his friend, proffered to paint his portrait, to which Mr. M---- agreed. A sitting once a week was decided upon, to be in the room at the parsonage where Branwell studied and painted. On his visits, Mr.

M---- invariably noticed a row of potatoes, placed on the uppermost rib of the range to roast, Branwell being very fond of them done in this way, even as Jane Eyre was in the novel. 'That night,' she says, 'on going to bed, I forgot to prepare, in imagination, the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes ... with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings.' When Mr. M---- paid his weekly visits to the parsonage he always heard some one speaking aloud in the room adjoining Branwell's studio; and, at last, his curiosity being excited, he inquired whom it was. Branwell answered that it was his father committing his Sunday's sermon to memory. When the portrait was ready for the finishing touches, Mr. M---- discovered that Branwell had painted the names of Johann Sebastian Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Handel at each corner of the canvas respectively. He remonstrated, but Branwell was firm, maintaining that, as his friend was an accomplished musician, and could perform the most elaborate and difficult compositions of these immortal men, with expression and ease, he was, in every way, worthy of being a.s.sociated with them in the manner he designed. Mr. M---- complied. When the portrait was finished, Branwell pressed his friend to take a gla.s.s of wine; and, while the two were chatting over the affair, Mr. Bronte and his daughters entered the room to view Branwell's work on its completion.

They were pleased with it, and praised it as a truthful likeness and an excellent picture.

We may well imagine the enthusiasm with which Branwell would recount his experience of Liverpool. How much he would have to tell of the wonders of the Mersey, the great ships that rode upon its surface, and its commerce with the new world, out across the ocean! His visit seems to have originated a proposal that the family should spend a week or a fortnight at that sea-port, but, almost at the same moment, Charlotte's friend suggested to her that they should visit Cleethorpes together, a suggestion that pleased her very much.

'The idea of seeing the sea,' she says, 'of being near it--watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and noon-day--in calm, perhaps in storm--fills and satisfies my mind. I shall be discontented at nothing. And then I am not to be with a set of people with whom I have nothing in common--who would be nuisances and bores.'

The visit of Charlotte to the sea-side seems to have been put off again and again, by often-recurring obstacles. The irresolution of her family in regard to the Liverpool project, and the manifest unwillingness that she should leave home on a visit anywhere else, put off, from time to time, the pleasure she had antic.i.p.ated for herself; but at last she decided to go. Her box was packed and everything prepared, but no conveyance could be procured. Mr. Bronte objected to her going by coach, and walking part of the way to meet her friend, and her aunt exclaimed against 'the weather, and the roads, and the four winds of heaven,' so Charlotte almost gave up hope. She told her friend that the elders of the house had never cordially acquiesced in the measure, and that opposition was growing more open, though her father would willingly have indulged her. Even he, however, wished her to remain at home. Charlotte was 'provoked'

that her aunt had deferred opposition until arrangements had been made. In the end 'E' was asked to pay a visit to the parsonage.

Owing to the circ.u.mstances indicated, Charlotte's visit to the sea-coast was put off until the following September, when an opportunity occurred favourable to the project, which does not seem to have been entirely abandoned; and she and her friend visited Easton where they spent a fortnight. Here for the first time Charlotte beheld the sea.

Afterwards she wrote, 'Have you forgotten the sea by this time, E.?

Is it grown dim in your mind? Or can you still see it, dark, blue and green and foam-white, and hear it roaring roughly when the wind is high, or rushing softly when it is calm?' The Liverpool journey appears to have been finally abandoned.

It was in a letter, written about this time that Mrs. Gaskell found the first mention of a succession of curates who henceforth revolved round Haworth Parsonage. Three years earlier Mr. Bronte had sought aid from the 'Additional Curates' Society,' or some similar inst.i.tution, and was provided at once with a.s.sistance. The increasing duties of his chapelry had rendered this step necessary. It would seem also that a curate was appointed to Stanbury, while another became master of the National or Grammar School. These gentlemen were not infrequent in their visits to the parsonage, and they varied the life of its inmates, sometimes one way and sometimes another. This circ.u.mstance, at the same time, provided Charlotte Bronte with those living studies which she did not fail afterwards to remember in her delineation of the three curates in 'Shirley.' Emily, on the other hand, invariably avoided these gentlemen.

The arrival of the curates at Haworth was the occasion of increased activity in the affairs of the chapelry; and, the church-rate question being uppermost at this juncture, the new-comers entered into a crusade against the Dissenters who had refused to pay church-rates. Charlotte wrote a long letter in which she spoke of a violent public meeting held at Haworth about the affair, and of two sermons against dissent--one by Mr. W. a 'n.o.ble, eloquent, high-church, apostolical-succession discourse, in which he banged the Dissenters most fearlessly and unflinchingly;' the other by Mr. C., a 'keener, cleverer, bolder, and more heart-stirring harangue,' than Charlotte, perhaps, had ever heard from the Haworth pulpit. She, however, did not entirely agree with either of these gentlemen, and thought, if she had been a Dissenter, she would have 'taken the first opportunity of kicking or of horse-whipping both.'

In the winter of 1839-40, Charlotte employed her leisure in the composition of a story which she had commenced on a scale commensurate with one of Richardson's novels of seven or eight volumes. Mrs. Gaskell saw some fragments of the ma.n.u.script, written in a very small hand: but she was less solicitous to decipher it, as Charlotte had herself condemned it in the preface to 'The Professor.'

Branwell, to whom she submitted it, seems to have understood, at the time, that in its florid style of composition she was working in opposition to her genius, and he told her she was making a mistake.

It appears not unlikely that Branwell was himself similarly engaged on prose writing when he gave her this opinion. A few months later, however, Charlotte resolved to send the commencement of her tale to Wordsworth, and that an unfavourable judgment was the result, for which she was not altogether unprepared, may be gathered from the following letter she addressed to the poet:--

'Authors are generally very tenacious of their productions, but I am not so much attached to this but that I can give it up without much distress. No doubt if I had gone on I should have made quite a Richardsonian concern of it.... I had materials in my head for half-a-dozen volumes.... Of course it is with considerable regret I relinquish any scheme so charming as the one I have sketched. It is very edifying and profitable to create a world out of your own brains, and people it with inhabitants who are so many Melchisedecs, and have no father or mother but your own imagination.... I am sorry I did not exist fifty or sixty years ago, when the "Ladies' Magazine"

was flourishing like a green bay-tree. In that case, I make no doubt, my aspirations after literary fame would have met with due encouragement, and I should have had the pleasure of introducing Messrs. Percy and West into the best society, and recording all their sayings and doings in double-columned, close-printed pages.... I recollect, when I was a child, getting hold of some antiquated volumes, reading them by stealth with the most exquisite pleasure.

You give a correct description of the patient Grisels of these days.

My aunt was one of them, and to this day she thinks the tales of the "Ladies' Magazine" infinitely superior to any trash of modern literature. So do I; for I read them in childhood, and childhood has a very strong faculty of admiration, but a very weak one of criticism.... I am pleased that you cannot quite decide whether I am an attorney's clerk or a novel-reading dressmaker. I will not help you at all in the discovery....'

In the midst of their literary endeavours, their efforts were not relaxed to obtain new places. Charlotte was obliged by circ.u.mstances to give up her subscriptions to the Jews, and she determined to force herself to take a situation, if one could be found, though she says, 'I hate and abhor the very thoughts of governess-ship.' An alternative which the sisters talked over in these holidays was the opening of a school at Haworth, for which an enlargement of the parsonage would be required.