During the earlier months of this spring, Haworth was extremely
unhealthy. The weather was damp, low fever was prevalent, and the
household at the Parsonage suffered along with its neighbours. Charlotte
says, "I have felt it (the fever) in frequent thirst and infrequent
appetite; Papa too, and even Martha, have complained." This depression
of health produced depression of spirits, and she grew more and more
to dread the proposed journey to London with Sir James and Lady Kay
Shuttleworth. "I know what the effect and what the pain will be, how
wretched I shall often feel, and how thin and haggard I shall get; but
he who shuns suffering will never win victory. If I mean to improve, I
must strive and endure. . . . Sir James has been a physician, and looks
at me with a physician's eye: he saw at once that I could not stand much
fatigue, nor bear the presence of many strangers. I believe he would
partly understand how soon my stock of animal spirits was brought to a
low ebb; but none--not the most skilful physician--can get at more than
the outside of these things: the heart knows its own bitterness, and the
frame its own poverty, and the mind its own struggles. Papa is eager and
restless for me to go; the idea of a refusal quite hurts him."
But the sensations of illness in the family increased; the symptoms were
probably aggravated, if not caused, by the immediate vicinity of the
church-yard, "paved with rain-blackened tomb-stones." On April 29th she
writes:--
"We have had but a poor week of it at Haworth. Papa continues far
from well; he is often very sickly in the morning, a symptom which I
have remarked before in his aggravated attacks of bronchitis; unless
he should get much better, I shall never think of leaving him to go
to London. Martha has suffered from tic-douloureux, with sickness and
fever, just like you. I have a bad cold, and a stubborn sore throat; in
short, everybody but old Tabby is out of sorts. When ---- was here, he
complained of a sudden headache, and the night after he was gone I had
something similar, very bad, lasting about three hours."
A fortnight later she writes:--
"I did not think Papa well enough to be left, and accordingly begged
Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth to return to London without me.
It was arranged that we were to stay at several of their friends' and
relatives' houses on the way; a week or more would have been taken
up on the journey. I cannot say that I regret having missed this
ordeal; I would as lief have walked among red-hot plough-shares; but
I do regret one great treat, which I shall now miss. Next Wednesday
is the anniversary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund Society, held in
Freemasons' Hall. Octavian Blewitt, the secretary, offered me a ticket
for the ladies' gallery. I should have seen all the great literati and
artists gathered in the hall below, and heard them speak; Thackeray and
Dickens are always present among the rest. This cannot now be. I don't
think all London can afford another sight to me so interesting."
It became requisite, however, before long, that she should go to London
on business; and as Sir James Kay Shuttleworth was detained in the
country by indisposition, she accepted Mrs. Smith's invitation to stay
quietly at her house, while she transacted her affairs.
In the interval between the relinquishment of the first plan and the
adoption of the second, she wrote the following letter to one who was
much valued among her literary friends:--
"May 22nd.
"I had thought to bring the Leader and the Athenaeum myself this time,
and not to have to send them by post, but it turns out otherwise; my
journey to London is again postponed, and this time indefinitely. Sir
James Kay Shuttleworth's state of health is the cause--a cause, I fear,
not likely to be soon removed. . . . Once more, then, I settle myself
down in the quietude of Haworth Parsonage, with books for my household
companions, and an occasional letter for a visitor; a mute society, but
neither quarrelsome, nor vulgarising, nor unimproving.
"One of the pleasures I had promised myself consisted in asking you
several questions about the Leader, which is really, in its way, an
interesting paper. I wanted, amongst other things, to ask you the
real names of some of the contributors, and also what Lewes writes
besides his Apprenticeship of Life. I always think the article headed
'Literature' is his. Some of the communications in the 'Open Council'
department are odd productions; but it seems to me very fair and right
to admit them. Is not the system of the paper altogether a novel one? I
do not remember seeing anything precisely like it before.
"I have just received yours of this morning; thank you for the enclosed
note. The longings for liberty and leisure which May sunshine wakens
in you, stir my sympathy. I am afraid Cornhill is little better than a
prison for its inmates on warm spring or summer days. It is a pity to
think of you all toiling at your desks in such genial weather as this.
For my part, I am free to walk on the moors; but when I go out there
alone, everything reminds me of the times when others were with me, and
then the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening.
My sister Emily had a particular love for them, and there is not a
knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf,
not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant
prospects were Anne's delight, and when I look round, she is in the blue
tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the
hill-country silence, their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my
mind: once I loved it; now I dare not read it, and am driven often to
wish I could taste one draught of oblivion, and forget much that, while
mind remains, I never shall forget. Many people seem to recall their
departed relatives with a sort of melancholy complacency, but I think
these have not watched them through lingering sickness, nor witnessed
their last moments: it is these reminiscences that stand by your bedside
at night, and rise at your pillow in the morning. At the end of all,
however, exists the Great Hope. Eternal Life is theirs now."
She had to write many letters, about this time, to authors who sent her
their books, and strangers who expressed their admiration of her own.
The following was in reply to one of the latter class, and was addressed
to a young man at Cambridge:--
"May 23rd, 1850.
"Apologies are indeed unnecessary for a 'reality of feeling, for a
genuine unaffected impulse of the spirit,' such as prompted you to write
the letter which I now briefly acknowledge.
"Certainly it is 'something to me' that what I write should be
acceptable to the feeling heart and refined intellect; undoubtedly it is
much to me that my creations (such as they are) should find harbourage,
appreciation, indulgence, at any friendly hand, or from any generous
mind. You are very welcome to take Jane, Caroline, and Shirley for your
sisters, and I trust they will often speak to their adopted brother
when he is solitary, and soothe him when he is sad. If they cannot
make themselves at home in a thoughtful, sympathetic mind, and diffuse
through its twilight a cheering, domestic glow, it is their fault;
they are not, in that case, so amiable, so benignant, not so real as
they ought to be. If they CAN, and can find household altars in human
hearts, they will fulfil the best design of their creation, in therein
maintaining a genial flame, which shall warm but not scorch, light but
not dazzle.
"What does it matter that part of your pleasure in such beings has its
source in the poetry of your own youth rather than in any magic of
theirs? What, that perhaps, ten years hence, you may smile to remember
your present recollections, and view under another light both 'Currer
Bell' and his writings? To me this consideration does not detract from
the value of what you now feel. Youth has its romance, and maturity its
wisdom, as morning and spring have their freshness, noon and summer
their power, night and winter their repose. Each attribute is good in
its own season. Your letter gave me pleasure, and I thank you for it.
"CURRER BELL."
Miss Brontë went up to town at the beginning of June, and much enjoyed
her stay there; seeing very few persons, according to the agreement she
made before she went; and limiting her visit to a fortnight, dreading
the feverishness and exhaustion which were the inevitable consequences
of the slightest excitement upon her susceptible frame.
"June 12th.
"Since I wrote to you last, I have not had many moments to myself,
except such as it was absolutely necessary to give to rest. On the
whole, however, I have thus far got on very well, suffering much less
from exhaustion than I did last time.
"Of course I cannot give you in a letter a regular chronicle of how my
time has been spent. I can only--just notify. what I deem three of its
chief incidents: a sight of the Duke of Wellington at the Chapel Royal
(he is a real grand old man), a visit to the House of Commons (which I
hope to describe to you some day when I see you), and last, not least,
an interview with Mr. Thackeray. He made a morning call, and sat above
two hours. Mr. Smith only was in the room the whole time. He described
it afterwards as a 'queer scene,' and--I suppose it was. The giant sate
before me; I was moved to speak to him of some of his short-comings
(literary of course); one by one the faults came into my head, and one
by one I brought them out, and sought some explanation or defence. He
did defend himself, like a great Turk and heathen; that is to say, the
excuses were often worse than the crime itself. The matter ended in
decent amity; if all be well, I am to dine at his house this evening.
"I have seen Lewes too. . . . I could not feel otherwise to him than
half-sadly, half-tenderly,--a queer word that last, but I use it
because the aspect of Lewes's face almost moves me to tears; it is
so wonderfully like Emily,--her eyes, her features, the very nose,
the somewhat prominent mouth, the forehead, even, at moments, the
expression: whatever Lewes says, I believe I cannot hate him. Another
likeness I have seen, too, that touched me sorrowfully. You remember
my speaking of a Miss K., a young authoress, who supported her mother
by writing? Hearing that she had a longing to see me, I called on her
yesterday. . . . She met me half-frankly, half-tremblingly; we sate
down together, and when I had talked with her five minutes, her face
was no longer strange, but mournfully familiar;--it was Martha in every
lineament. I shall try to find a moment to see her again. . . . I do not
intend to stay here, at the furthest, more than a week longer; but at
the end of that time I cannot go home, for the house at Haworth is just
now unroofed; repairs were become necessary."
She soon followed her letter to the friend to whom it was written; but
her visit was a very short one, for, in accordance with a plan made
before leaving London, she went on to Edinburgh to join the friends
with whom she had been staying in town. She remained only a few days in
Scotland, and those were principally spent in Edinburgh, with which she
was delighted, calling London a "dreary place" in comparison.
"My stay in Scotland" (she wrote some weeks later) "was short, and
what I saw was chiefly comprised in Edinburgh and the neighbourhood,
in Abbotsford and in Melrose, for I was obliged to relinquish my first
intention of going from Glasgow to Oban, and thence through a portion
of the Highlands; but though the time was brief, and the view of
objects limited, I found such a charm of situation, association, and
circumstance, that I think the enjoyment experienced in that little
space equalled in degree, and excelled in kind, all which London yielded
during a month's sojourn. Edinburgh, compared to London, is like a vivid
page of history compared to a large dull treatise on political economy;
and as to Melrose and Abbotsford, the very names possess music and
magic."
And again, in a letter to a different correspondent, she says:--
"I would not write to you immediately on my arrival at home, because
each return to this old house brings with it a phase of feeling which it
is better to pass through quietly before beginning to indite letters.
The six weeks of change and enjoyment are past, but they are not lost;
memory took a sketch of each as it went by, and, especially, a distinct
daguerreotype of the two days I spent in Scotland. Those were two
very pleasant days. I always liked Scotland as an idea, but now, as a
reality, I like it far better; it furnished me with some hours as happy
almost as any I ever spent. Do not fear, however, that I am going to
bore you with description; you will, before now, have received a pithy
and pleasant report of all things, to which any addition of mine would
be superfluous. My present endeavours are directed towards recalling my
thoughts, cropping their wings, drilling them into correct discipline,
and forcing them to settle to some useful work: they are idle, and
keep taking the train down to London, or making a foray over the
Border--especially are they prone to perpetrate that last excursion; and
who, indeed, that has once seen Edinburgh, with its couchant crag-lion,
but must see it again in dreams, waking or sleeping? My dear sir, I
do not think I blaspheme, when I tell you that your great London, as
compared to Dun-Edin, 'mine own romantic town,' is as prose compared
to poetry, or as a great rumbling, rambling, heavy epic compared to a
lyric, brief, bright, clear and vital as a flash of lightning. You have
nothing like Scott's monument, or, if you had that, and all the glories
of architecture assembled together, you have nothing like Arthur's Seat,
and, above all, you have not the Scotch national character; and it is
that grand character after all which gives the land its true charm, its
true greatness.
On her return from Scotland, she again spent a few days with her
friends, and then made her way to Haworth.
"July 15th.
I got home very well, and full glad was I that no insuperable obstacle
had deferred my return one single day longer. Just at the foot of
Bridgehouse hill, I met John, staff in hand; he fortunately saw me in
the cab, stopped, and informed me he was setting off to B----, by Mr.
Brontë's orders, to see how I was, for that he had been quite miserable
ever since he got Miss ----'s letter. I found, on my arrival, that Papa
had worked himself up to a sad pitch of nervous excitement and alarm,
in which Martha and Tabby were but too obviously joining him. . . . The
house looks very clean, and, I think, is not damp; there is, however,
still a great deal to do in the way of settling and arranging,--enough
to keep me disagreeably busy for some time to come. I was truly thankful
to find Papa pretty well, but I fear he is just beginning to show
symptoms of a cold: my cold continues better. . . . An article in a
newspaper I found awaiting me on my arrival, amused me; it was a paper
published while I was in London. I enclose it to give you a laugh; it
professes to be written by an Author jealous of Authoresses. I do not
know who he is, but he must be one of those I met. . . . The 'ugly men,'
giving themselves 'Rochester airs,' is no bad hit; some of those alluded
to will not like it."
While Miss Brontë was staying in London, she was induced to sit for
her portrait to Richmond. It is a crayon drawing; in my judgment an
admirable likeness, though of course there is some difference of opinion
on the subject; and, as usual, those best acquainted with the original
were least satisfied with the resemblance. Mr. Brontë thought that it
looked older than Charlotte did, and that her features had not been
flattered; but he acknowledged that the expression was wonderfully good
and life-like. She sent the following amusing account of the arrival of
the portrait to the donor:--
"Aug. 1st.
"The little box for me came at the same time as the large one for Papa.
When you first told me that you had had the Duke's picture framed, and
had given it to me, I felt half provoked with you for performing such
a work of supererogation, but now, when I see it again, I cannot but
acknowledge that, in so doing, you were felicitously inspired. It is
his very image, and, as Papa said when he saw it, scarcely in the least
like the ordinary portraits; not only the expression, but even the form
of the head is different, and of a far nobler character. I esteem it a
treasure. The lady who left the parcel for me was, it seems, Mrs. Gore.
The parcel contained one of her works, 'The Hamiltons,' and a very civil
and friendly note, in which I find myself addressed as 'Dear Jane.' Papa
seems much pleased with the portrait, as do the few other persons who
have seen it, with one notable exception; viz., our old servant, who
tenaciously maintains that it is not like--that it is too old-looking;
but as she, with equal tenacity, asserts that the Duke of Wellington's
picture is a portrait of 'the Master' (meaning Papa), I am afraid not
much weight is to be ascribed to her opinion: doubtless she confuses
her recollections of me as I was in childhood with present impressions.
Requesting always to be very kindly remembered to your mother and
sisters, I am, yours very thanklessly (according to desire),
"C. BRONTË."
It may easily be conceived that two people living together as Mr.
Brontë and his daughter did, almost entirely dependent on each
other for society, and loving each other deeply (although not
demonstratively)--that these two last members of a family would have
their moments of keen anxiety respecting each other's health. There
is not one letter of hers which I have read, that does not contain
some mention of her father's state in this respect. Either she thanks
God with simple earnestness that he is well, or some infirmities of
age beset him, and she mentions the fact, and then winces away from
it, as from a sore that will not bear to be touched. He, in his turn,
noted every indisposition of his one remaining child's, exaggerated
its nature, and sometimes worked himself up into a miserable state of
anxiety, as in the case she refers to, when, her friend having named
in a letter to him that his daughter was suffering from a bad cold, he
could not rest till he despatched a messenger, to go, "staff in hand" a
distance of fourteen miles, and see with his own eyes what was her real
state, and return and report.
She evidently felt that this natural anxiety on the part of her father
and friend increased the nervous depression of her own spirits, whenever
she was ill; and in the following letter she expresses her strong
wish that the subject of her health should be as little alluded to as
possible.
"Aug. 7th.
"I am truly sorry that I allowed the words to which you refer to escape
my lips, since their effect on you has been unpleasant; but try to
chase every shadow of anxiety from your mind, and, unless the restraint
be very disagreeable to you, permit me to add an earnest request that
you will broach the subject to me no more. It is the undisguised and
most harassing anxiety of others that has fixed in my mind thoughts and
expectations which must canker wherever they take root; against which
every effort of religion or philosophy must at times totally fail; and
subjugation to which is a cruel terrible fate--the fate, indeed, of him
whose life was passed under a sword suspended by a horse-hair. I have
had to entreat Papa's consideration on this point. My nervous system
is soon wrought on. I should wish to keep it in rational strength and
coolness; but to do so I must determinedly resist the kindly-meant, but
too irksome expression of an apprehension, for the realisation or defeat
of which I have no possible power to be responsible. At present, I am
pretty well. Thank God! Papa, I trust, is no worse, but he complains of
weakness."