Wuthering Heights Revisited Read online

  Miss Branwell insisted that, after such a long journey, I should have something to eat, but what was provided was badly cooked and I could not help but notice the cheap cutlery and the darned tablecloth. Charlotte’s father joined us and my first impression of the Rev. Patrick Brontë was not an unpleasing one. He had the bearing of a soldier and in his clerical garb he struck me as looking very venerable, with his snow-white hair and powdered white collar and small-lensed spectacles. Unfortunately, closer contact made me appreciate that he had none of the genial warmth that is the hallmark of the best of the clergy. Though his manner and mode of speech had the tone of high-bred courtesy, he was morose and he made no effort to engage me in conversation. He also made far too much of being an invalid, to the extent that his silk cravat was worn up to the edge of his lips to protect himself from any draughts. This focused attention on his piercing, pale blue eyes. To further protect himself, he insisted on the house being heated to an uncomfortable degree, on the shutters being drawn early, and on doors being kept shut, and he was very fussy about what he ate, claiming that he was easily prone to dyspepsia and indigestion.

  The parsonage itself was elegant enough from the outside, possessing fine sash windows, a doorway with pilasters and portico, and a stone-flagged roof, but its garden, which consisted mainly of a few stunted fruit bushes and some lilacs and elders, was terribly neglected. Internally it was very austere with very little carving or ornamental plasterwork. It had some wooden panelling but there were no curtains at any of the windows (their place being taken by wooden shutters) and not much carpet anywhere, except for a few rugs on the stone-flagged floors in the sitting room and in Mr Brontë’s study. Instead of being papered, the walls were coloured in a dove-shade tint, and there was only a small amount of inexpensive furniture. It made me realize how fortunate I was to live in such great splendour and comfort at my home. Later I was taken upstairs, where there were five rooms, all spartanly furnished. Mr Brontë shared one with Branwell, his sister-in-law one with Anne, and Charlotte one with Emily. The fourth room belonged to the servants and the fifth room acted as a kind of day room so that the family could undertake tasks without disturbing Mr Brontë in his study.

  Despite his earlier visit to my home, Branwell kept himself much to himself. I thought him obsessed with things military and was surprised that he was still expecting his sisters to create imaginary tales about his toy soldiers. There were aspects of his character I found very unattractive. For a start, he showed little respect to either his aunt or father whenever he was out of their presence, poking fun at her Cornish accent and idiosyncratic manners and mimicking his father’s Irish accent. He also, on this occasion, appeared unhealthily morbid. When I mentioned how taken aback I had been to see so much poverty in the village, he seized me by the arm and whispered savagely in my ear, ‘What is the point of living, Miss Nussey? We are just wretched beings, tossed upon time’s tide. We can see all life’s rocks and whirlpools, but fate prevents us from escaping them. We are doomed from our first bitter breath to launch upon this sea of death without a hope. My father talks of the justice we will receive as our reward in heaven but that is just a delusion. When we die, all that happens is that our corpses fester and decay. I shall never see my mother and older sisters again, whatever my father says. All I have to remind me of them is that last sight of their white and wasted bodies as I was made to kiss them goodbye.’

  I soon appreciated that Mr Brontë, Miss Branwell and Charlotte’s brother saw my visit as an unwelcome nuisance, even though they took some pride in Charlotte having acquired such a ladylike friend. However, the friendly reception that I was offered by Charlotte’s younger sisters more than outweighed their coolness. We were, of course, all of a similar age. I was sixteen, Anne was thirteen, Emily had just become fifteen, and Charlotte was seventeen. I found Anne open in manner and gentle in nature but a little shy. She had a very pretty face, with a clear, almost transparent complexion, fine pencilled eyebrows, lovely violet-blue eyes, and attractive brown hair. She was very much treated as the baby of the family, although she was only a little younger than her sisters and already taller than both Branwell and Charlotte. As for Emily, few people could look and smile like her. She was a strange mix: at times wild and headstrong, at times very reserved, despite the fact that she physically dominated us because of her greater height. She had a lithesome, graceful figure and the most beautiful kind, liquid blue-grey eyes, but her complexion was poor and her hair was shaped into an unbecoming tight curl and frizz. What struck me most was her adoration for birds and animals. Unfortunately this meant her clothes were often dirty as a consequence of her keeping a small menagerie of cats, dogs and geese in the kitchen.

  Seeing Charlotte in her home environment made me realize for the first time just how isolated an existence her family lived. It was to compensate for this that she and her sisters – and indeed her brother also – had got into the habit of constantly inventing their own imaginary worlds. They made up stories and acted them out, using whatever they could find to make improvized costumes. To my surprise Charlotte identified so much more with Branwell than her sisters that she often took the part of a male, painting a moustache above her lips. Even with me present as their guest, the four of them used to disappear to secretly write and draw, forgetting their duties as host. When they re-emerged, they would engage in weird tableaux or wild dances or enter into debates about politics or the latest book or magazine that they had read, much to my confusion. It was no wonder that Charlotte had felt so out of place when she had first entered the polite, refined circles of Roe Head. I was far too inhibited to join in their games and often felt socially uncomfortable amid their noisy banter. They jokingly dubbed me ‘Your Ladyship’.

  Breakfast each day of the fortnight I was there was awful. It began with a solemn prayer from Mr Brontë and then Charlotte’s aunt insisted on turning it into an occasion when she could preach at us. The tenure of her talk was always the same. She hoped that we had not been thinking unworthy thoughts because, had we died during the night, we would have damned ourselves to eternal destruction in the fiery pit. She knew that Haworth was a barren desert but its soulless, godforsaken nature would not prepare us for the torments and horrors of hell. Mostly these tirades were met with a deathly silence, though I could see by the expression on Branwell’s face that he was scornful of her fierce piety. On one morning Charlotte tried to remonstrate with her aunt, saying that she should be more charitable in the company of a guest, but this was greeted with a stern reprimand and an even longer lecture about the sins that so easily beset young girls. Teatime was little better. The conversation consisted mainly of arguments about religion between her and Mr Brontë.

  My experience was no happier when I went to hear Mr Brontë preach in church. I soon realized that the people he served were for the most part entirely illiterate and therefore unable to follow the service book. When they assembled they did so with a stolid look of apathy fixed on their faces. Some took the occasion to go to sleep and a sexton with a long staff would continually walk round in the aisles to prod them awake. It was also his task to keep children from becoming too unruly. When Mr Brontë began to expound, it is true most listened but they took no pleasure in it. He spoke for about an hour as was his custom, and, to do him credit, I thought he preached quite well and with a dignified air. He did not rant or whine but spoke with the authority of a man impressed with the truth of what he was saying and who has no fear of consequences, but I am not convinced this achieved anything. Some looked as if for a penny they would defiantly oppose whatever he said, while others tried to look as if they understood what they blatantly did not.

  What made my visit enjoyable was that both Emily and Anne were insistent that Charlotte should permit me to explore the countryside they loved and so the four of us went on delightful rambles, threading our way through the creep-holes in the dry-stone walls down into the glens and ravines that here and there broke the monotony of the moorland that surr
ounded their home. Branwell accompanied us as our protector, though he was no different in age. On these walks I could not help but notice that the close bond between Anne and Emily was far deeper than their relationship with Charlotte, whom they treated more like a substitute mother. Each of the sisters in her own way seemed to become another person once on the moor, more alive, more vivacious, more happy. I took pleasure in their enjoyment of nature and in the way they often lingered to appreciate almost every new flower, every fresh tint and shape in the surrounding scenery. Even just the fording of a stream by the use of a few stepping stones seemed to cause them an untiring excitement.

  They took me on more than one occasion to their favourite spot, which they called ‘The Meeting of the Waters’. It was a small oasis of emerald-green turf, broken here and there by small clear springs. Seated on a few large stones that served as resting places, we were literally hidden from the human world and nothing appeared in view but miles and miles of heather, a glorious blue sky, and the brightening sun. We laughed and made mirth of each other, and agreed that we would call ourselves ‘the quartette’. Emily, half reclining on a slab of stone, played happily with the tadpoles in the water and then fell to moralizing on which were the strong and brave, and which were the weak and cowardly, as she chased them with her hand. Anne joined in and soon the two of them were almost oblivious of either Charlotte or me. The extent to which Anne’s love of nature was inspired by Emily’s was something I came later to increasingly appreciate.

  When my visit came to an end, Charlotte and I agreed that we would try not to rely entirely on letters to keep our friendship alive and that, whenever circumstances permitted, we would meet up again in our respective homes. In 1835 Charlotte began teaching at our old school, Roe Head, in order that Emily and Anne might also receive an education there. However, all three sisters saw no future for themselves but menial employment. They thought Branwell alone was destined for greatness either as a writer or an artist. Are not men’s interests always put before those of women in the world in which we live? I, like them, assumed he was the most gifted. He had the ability to read a page at a glance whilst at the same time instantly committing it to memory, and so possessed an extraordinarily wide knowledge as a result of his extensive reading of newspapers, journals, magazines, and library books. Not only could he write imaginatively and well, but, if he chose, he could write two things at once, using both his right and left hands simultaneously, and that dexterity was equally evident in his ability to draw.

  Unfortunately his sisters’ extreme reverence for his talents convinced Branwell that he was going to effortlessly acquire greatness. That year he told Charlotte that his artistic gifts were going to be snapped up by the Royal Academy. In fact this was nonsense. His art teacher told Branwell that he had nothing in the portfolio of his work that was yet suitable and that he could never expect to become a famous painter without first showing greater dedication. Branwell’s response was to say there was no point going to the Royal Academy if it would not take him solely on the basis of his flair and inspiration. He then pretended to his friends that he had gone to the Academy and left because it proved unworthy of his talents! Then he wrote arrogant letters to Blackwood’s Magazine, almost demanding that its editor should employ him as a writer because he was so uniquely gifted. Needless to say, he received no replies.

  I watched as first Emily and then Anne and then Charlotte all became ill from their attempts to prepare themselves for a life of drudgery, whilst Branwell merely dabbled in voluntary roles in Haworth, playing the church organ, teaching in the Sunday school, and for a time becoming secretary to the local Temperance Society. Through his father’s influence, he was initiated as a Mason and I know it was Charlotte’s view that this proved detrimental. The strange rites associated with the Masons led to a growing obsession with things fantastical. Branwell began writing more and more about increasingly bizarre fictitious worlds. What made matters worse was that the lodge met in the Black Bull and this encouraged him to spend time drinking there, with the consequence that his language grew increasingly coarse and his stories became obsessed with illicit passions and decadent living. In 1838 Mr Brontë paid to set him up as a portrait painter in Bradford, but this venture proved short-lived because Branwell took it as a personal slight whenever a potential client chose to go to a better-known artist in Halifax or Leeds.

  Branwell returned to Haworth in February 1839 ostensibly to yet again devote time to writing a masterpiece. When I heard about this, I was not impressed. From my simple perspective, it was time Charlotte’s brother stopped relying on his family to sustain him. How could he not see that his unemployment was placing pressure on his sisters to take up very uncongenial employment rather than additionally burden their father? In September 1838 Emily had been forced to take employment as a teacher at a terrible girls’ boarding school at Law Hill on the high moorland overlooking Halifax. When she returned home shattered by that experience, Anne took on the earning role and in April 1839 became a governess to a family called Ingham, who lived at Blake Hall, near Mirfield. The following month Charlotte became a governess to a family called Sidgwick, who lived near Skipton.

  By this time I was convinced that Branwell was not worth Charlotte’s sacrifice of her own potential for greatness. Little did I realize that I was about to discover why the self-loathing expressed in her letter of December 1836 had validity. The pedestal on which I had set her in comparison to her brother was shortly to crumble in ways that I could not possibly have foreseen.

  2

  Unrequited Passion

  Charlotte left me in no doubt from the outset that she found being a governess detestable and demeaning for a person of her intelligence and talents. She found it hard to repel the rude familiarity of her riotous and unmanageable wards and unreasonable that Mrs Sidgwick expected her, once lessons were over, to undertake hours of needlework hemming yards of cambric and making muslin nightcaps. She found it insufferable that she even had to make clothes for the children’s dolls! I was not entirely sympathetic because I had offered Charlotte a route out of such misery by encouraging my brother Henry to propose to her in the March of 1839. I had been confident she would accept because my brother was a very eligible young man of twenty-seven who had newly become a curate in Sussex. She knew enough of him to know that he would be a good and kind husband. Moreover, Henry had intimated to her that, should they marry, he was prepared to have me stay with them so that Charlotte and I could enjoy our friendship to the full.

  Yet amazingly Charlotte had declined his offer, saying that even the teaching she hated could not drive her into making a loveless marriage. Her refusal seemed madness to me, and, given her unhappiness as a governess, I hoped to make her rethink the matter that autumn. In October I borrowed Henry’s carriage so that I could take her for a holiday to Bridlington on the East Yorkshire coast. Charlotte had never seen the sea before and she revelled in its rough roar and swirling mix of green and blue and foam-white, but I got nowhere on the subject of her marrying my brother. I am sure that was because in the summer her father had acquired a new curate called Mr William Weightman. This handsome and constitutionally cheerful twenty-three-year-old seemed a far more attractive proposition than my brother. He had found no problem in charming Charlotte’s eyes with his rosy cheeks, blue eyes and fine auburn hair and in delighting her ears with his clever wit and his romantic tales.

  I confess that I was also not immune to Mr Weightman’s charms. I remember in particular a night when Charlotte, Emily, Anne and I all went to hear him speak at the Mechanics Institute in Keighley. He spoke not just with learning but also with wit and vigour, and then, on our long walk back to Haworth, he entertained us so well that the time flew and I could scarce believe it was midnight when we reached the parsonage. Emily teased me that she would have to become our chaperone if I continued to spend time with him. This annoyed Charlotte, who told me that she did not mind him finding troops of victims amongst young ladies as long as
I was not one of them. I responded by saying that her interest in my feelings for the curate must indicate she had herself been smitten by Cupid’s bolt. This she denied but not, I thought, convincingly. Perhaps to offset his charisma – and so perhaps weaken his impact – we took to nicknaming him ‘Miss Celia Amelia’ because he blushed very easily. Somehow calling him this made his presence among us seem safer. Once it became clear that he had no intention of seriously courting Charlotte, she took against him and began denigrating his character. I found this unsettling because he was a good man and I mourned his loss when he caught cholera from working among the poor and died in the September of 1842.

  In the March of 1841 Charlotte moved to enter the employ of a family called White, who lived in Upperwood House in Rawden, near Leeds. Her experiences there served to convince her that she lacked the patience to be an effective governess and that she was not cut out to live in other people’s houses. She informed me that Mr and Mrs White were civil enough and the children – a boy of six and a girl of eight – reasonably well disposed towards her, but this did not alter the fact that her role was inadequately paid. She felt her life was being wasted. I was not surprised to hear from Charlotte how she had begged her father not to make her return when she visited home that Christmas. She made much of the fact that Emily’s health had collapsed as a result of her work at Law Hill and of how equally unhappy Anne was. The outcome was that their aunt agreed to provide £100 from her savings so that all of her nieces could set up their own school in Haworth.

  It was what happened next that made me realize how much I had let my love for Charlotte blind me to her selfishness. She rejected a kind offer by Miss Wooler to let her take over her school, though it had a good reputation and required little in the way of investment. Instead she persuaded her father that, prior to her and her sisters opening a school, he should permit her and Emily to go to Brussels, where they could improve their French and German. Thus Charlotte committed Emily, who had no desire to leave home, to go abroad and simultaneously condemned Anne to unnecessary months of further slave labour as a governess. Was not this shockingly selfish behaviour? Moreover, in the light of what subsequently happened, I do not believe that Charlotte ever intended creating a school. All she really wanted was to use her aunt’s money to fund an adventure for herself.