About this time Patrick, or Branwell, Brontë, who, during an idle life about the village, had fallen into evil ways, and had recently been dismissed in disgrace from his situation as station-master at a small place on the line of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, obtained employment as tutor in the house where Anne was governess.
In January, 1844, Charlotte returned to Haworth, and the sisters endeavored to start the school of which they had long been dreaming. It was a complete failure. They were unable to secure a single pupil; and by November the cherished plan was relinquished.
Charlotte and Emily lived down their failure together in the dreary parsonage. Their father was growing old, was losing his sight. Anne was out of health; they were troubled about Branwell. At last, in June, 1845, a great blow fell upon them. Their brother had engaged in an intrigue with his employer’s wife: he was discovered, denounced, sent home in shame; and from that time forth “thought of little but stunning or drowning his agony of mind” with drink or opium. The miserable state of things at Haworth for the next three years is almost inconceivable; yet it was out of this very field of nettles that the flower of immortality was plucked.
In May, 1846, a little volume of verse “by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell” was put forth, but failed as the school had failed. Meanwhile, in the winter of 1845-6 and the following spring, each of the three sisters had been at work upon a novel. Emily’s was WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Anne’s, _Agnes Grey_, and Charlotte’s, _The Professor_. They were despatched to various publishers, at first together, afterwards singly. In August, 1846, Mr. Brontë underwent an operation for cataract at Manchester, Charlotte being his companion and nurse. The operation was successful. At the end of September father and daughter returned to Haworth. In August, 1847, JANE EYRE was completed and sent to Messrs. Smith & Elder as the work of “Currer Bell.” It was accepted, and was published in October. In December another publishing house brought out WUTHERING HEIGHTS and _Agnes Grey_. JANE EYRE almost immediately created a great sensation.
In the summer of 1848 a misunderstanding with their respective publishers led Charlotte and Anne to take a hurried journey to London, where they astonished Messrs. Smith & Elder with a call. They were very kindly received, and introduced to the friends of Mr. Smith as “the Miss Browns.”
In September, 1848, the unhappy Branwell died. Emily never left the house after the day of his funeral. A troublesome cough developed into consumption. After months of increasing weakness borne in a spirit of silent and stubborn resistance, in December, 1848, Emily Brontë followed her brother. Anne, always delicate, did not linger long behind them. In the ensuing spring she died at Scarborough, whither Charlotte and Miss Nussey had brought her but a few days before for the benefit of the sea air. Charlotte and her father were left alone together.
SHIRLEY, began before Emily’s death, was published in October, 1849; and toward the end of the year Charlotte visited London. The mask of “Currer Bell” was dropped, and Miss Brontë made the acquaintance of Thackeray, Harriet Martineau and others. In June, 1850, she was again in London. This year she took a flying trip to Scotland. She was Miss Martineau’s guest at Ambleside in December. In this month appeared the second edition of WUTHERING HEIGHTS and _Agnes Grey_, which she had edited, writing a preface, and a biographical notice of Emily and Anne. In June, 1851, she again visited London. Early in 1853 VILLETTE was published.
About this time the Reverend Arthur Nicholls, Mr. Brontë’s assistant, asked Charlotte to be his wife. Her father was bitterly opposed to the marriage; the daughter obeyed him; and Mr. Nicholls left Haworth. It was not until 1854 that Mr. Brontë could be induced to give his consent. On June 29th of this year, Charlotte was married to Mr. Nicholls. They visited Ireland, and on their return took up a happy and useful life at Haworth. The future seemed full of promise, the only cloud upon it being Mr. Nicholls’ lack of sympathy with his wife’s literary pursuits. But the story so sad till now was to be soon and sadly ended. On the 31st of March, 1855, Charlotte died at Haworth.
“Alas,” sings Matthew Arnold:[8]
“Early she goes on the path To the silent country, and leaves Half her laurels unwon, Dying too soon!”
But in turning to Emily Brontë, his voice takes the accent of wonder:
“She (How shall I sing her?) whose soul Knew no fellow for might, Passion, vehemence, grief, Daring, since Byron died.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Haworth.]
The village of Haworth stands, steep and gray, on the topmost side of an abrupt low hill. Such hills, more steep than high, are congregated round, circle beyond circle, to the utmost limit of the horizon. Not a wood, not a river. As far as eye can reach these treeless hills, their sides cut into fields by gray walls of stone with here and there a gray stone village, and here and there a gray stone mill, present no other colors than the singular north-country brilliance of the green grass, and the blackish gray of the stone. Now and then a toppling, gurgling mill-beck gives life to the scene. But the real life, the only beauty of the country, is set on the top of all the hills, where moor joins moor from Yorkshire into Lancashire, a coiled chain of wild, free places. White with snow in winter, black at midsummer, it is only when spring dapples the dark heather-stems with the vivid green of the sprouting whortleberry bushes, only when in early autumn the moors are one humming mass of fragrant purple, that any beauty of tint lights up the scene. But there is always a charm in the moors for hardy and solitary spirits. Between them and heaven nothing dares to interpose. The shadows of the coursing clouds alter the aspect of the place a hundred times a day. A hundred little springs and streams well in its soil, making spots of vivid greenness round their rise. A hundred birds of every kind are flying and singing there. Larks sing; cuckoos call; all the tribe of linnets and finches twitter in the bushes; plovers moan; wild ducks fly past; more melancholy than all, on stormy days, the white sea-mews cry, blown so far inland by the force of the gales that sweep irresistibly over the treeless and houseless moors. There in the spring you may take in your hands the weak, halting fledglings of the birds; rabbits and game multiply in the hollows. There in the autumn the crowds of bees, mad in the heather, send the sound of their humming down the village street. The winds, the clouds, Nature and life, must be the friends of those who would love the moors.
A. MARY F. ROBINSON: ‘Emily Brontë.’ (_Famous Women Series_). Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The Parsonage.]
The parsonage stands at right angles to the road, facing down upon the church; so that, in fact, parsonage, church, and belfried school-house, form three sides of an irregular oblong, of which the fourth is open to the fields and moors that lie beyond. The area of this oblong is filled up by a crowded church-yard, and a small garden or court in front of the clergyman’s house. As the entrance to this from the road is at the side, the path goes round the corner into the little plot of ground. Underneath the windows is a narrow flower-border, carefully tended in days of yore, although only the most hardy plants could be made to grow there. Within the stone-wall, which keeps out the surrounding church-yard, are bushes of elder and lilac; the rest of the ground is occupied by a square grass-plot and a gravel walk. The house is of gray stone, two stories high, heavily roofed with flags, in order to resist the winds that might strip off a lighter covering. It appears to have been built about a hundred years ago, and to consist of four rooms on each story; the two windows on the right (as the visitor stands, with his back to the church, ready to enter in at the front door), belonging to Mr. Brontë’s study, the two on the left to the family sitting-room.... The little church lies, as I mentioned, above most of the houses in the village; and the graveyard rises above the church, and is terribly full of upright tombstones.
ELIZABETH C. GASKELL: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë,’ Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1857.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Interior of the parsonage.]
The interior of the now far-famed parsonage lacked drapery of all kinds. Mr. Brontë’s horror of fire forbade curtains to the windows. There was not much carpet anywhere except in the sitting-room and on the study floor. The hall floor and stairs were done with sand-stone, always beautifully clean, as everything else was about the house; the walls were not papered, but stained in a pretty dove-colored tint; hair-seated chairs and mahogany tables, book-shelves in the study, but not many of these elsewhere.... A little later on, [Miss N. is writing of 1833], there was the addition of a piano.