 Volume 2, Section 18 of the Life of Charlotte Bronte. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Clegghorn Gaskell. Volume 2, Section 18. A letter to her Brussels school fellow gives an idea of the external course of things during this winter. March 8. I was very glad to see your handwriting again. It is, I believe, a gear since I heard from you. Again and again you have recurred to my thoughts lately, and I was beginning to have some sad presages as to the cause of your silence. Your letter happily does away with all these. It brings, on the whole, glad tidings both of your papa, mama, your sisters, and last but not least, your dear respected English self. My dear father has borne the severe winter very well, a circumstance for which I feel the more thankful as he had many weeks of very precarious health last summer, following an attack from which he suffered in June, and which for a few hours deprived him totally of sight, though neither his mind, speech, nor even his powers of motion were in the least affected. I can hardly tell you how thankful I was when, after that dreary and almost despairing interval of utter darkness, some gleam of daylight became visible to him once more. I had feared that paralysis had seized the optic nerve. A sort of mist remained for a long time, and indeed his vision is not yet perfectly clear, but he can read, write, and walk about, and he preaches twice every Sunday, the curate only reading the prayers. You can well understand how earnestly I wish and pray that sight may be spared him to the end. He so dreads the privation of blindness. His mind is just as strong and active as ever, and politics interest him, as they do your papa. The Tsar, the war, the alliance between France and England, into all these things he throws himself heart and soul. They seem to carry him back to his comparatively young days, and to renew the excitement of the last great European struggle. Of course my father's sympathies, and mine too, are all with justice and Europe against tyranny and Russia. Circumstanced as I have been, you will comprehend that I have had neither the leisure nor the inclination to go from home much during the past year. I spent a week with Mrs. Gaskell in the spring, and a fortnight with some other friends more recently, and that includes the whole of my visiting since I saw you last. My life is indeed very uniform and retired, more so than is quite healthful, either for mind or body. Yet I find reason for often renewed feelings of gratitude in the sort of support which still comes and cheers me on from time to time. My health, though not unbroken, is I sometimes fancy, rather stronger on the whole than it was three years ago. Headache and dyspepsia are my worst ailments. Whether I shall come up to town this season for a few days, I do not yet know. But if I do, I shall hope to call in P. Place. In April she communicated the facts of her engagement to Miss Wooler. My dear Miss Wooler, the truly kind interest which you always take in my affairs makes me feel that it is due to you to transmit an early communication on a subject respecting which I have already consulted you more than once. I must tell you then that since I wrote last, Papa's mind has gradually come round to a view very different to that which he once took, and that after some correspondence, and as the result of a visit Mr. Nichols paid here about a week ago, it was agreed that he was to resume the curacy of Howard as soon as Papa's present assistant is provided with a situation, and in due course of time he is to be received as an inmate into this house. It gives me unspeakable content to see that now my father has once admitted this new view of the case, he dwells on it very complacently. In all arrangements, his convenience and seclusion will be scrupulously respected. Mr. Nichols seems deeply to feel the wish to comfort and sustain his declining years. I think, for Mr. Nichols' character, I may depend on this not being a mere transitory impulsive feeling, but rather that it will be accepted steadily as a duty, and discharged, tenderly, as an office of affection. The destiny which providence in his goodness and wisdom seems to offer me, will not, I am aware, be generally regarded as brilliant. But I trust I see in it some germs of real happiness. I trust the demands of both feeling and duty will be in some measure reconciled by the step in contemplation. It is Mr. Nichols' wish that the marriage should take place this summer. He urges the month of July, but that seems very soon. When you write to me, tell me how you are. I have now decidedly declined to visit to London. During three months will bring me abundance of occupation. I could not afford to throw away a month. Papa has just got a letter from the good and dear bishop, which has touched and pleased us much. It expresses a cordial and approbation of Mr. Nichols' return to Howarth, respecting which he was consulted, and such kind gratification at the domestic arrangements which are to ensue. It seems his penetration discovered the state of things when he was here in June 1853. She expressed herself in other letters as thankful to one who has guided her through much difficulty and much distress and perplexity of mind. And yet she felt what most thoughtful women do, who marry when the first flush of careless youth is over, that there was a strange, half-sad feeling in making announcements of an engagement. For cares and fears came mingled inextricably with hopes. One great relief to her mind at this time was derived from the conviction that her father took a positive pleasure in all the thoughts about and preparations for her wedding. She was anxious that things should be expediated, and was much interested in every preliminary arrangement for the reception of Mr. Nichols into the parsonage as his daughter's husband. This step was rendered necessary by Mr. Bronte's great age and failing sight, which made it a paramount obligation on so due to full a daughter as Charlotte to devote as much time and assistance as ever in attending to his wants. Mr. Nichols, too, hoped that he might be able to add some comfort and pleasure by his ready presence on any occasion when the old clergyman might need his services. At the beginning of May, Miss Bronte left home to pay three visits before her marriage. The first was to us. She only remained three days as she had to go to the neighborhood of Leeds, there to make such purchases as were required for her marriage. Her preparations, as she said, could neither be expensive nor extensive, consisting chiefly in a modest replenishing of her wardrobe, some repapering and repainting in the parsonage, and, above all, converting the small, flagged passage room hitherto used only for stores, which was behind her sitting-room, into a study for her husband. On this idea, and plans for his comfort, as well as her father's, her mind well a good deal, and we talk them over with the same unwearing happiness which, I suppose, all women feel in such discussions. Especially when money considerations call for that kind of contrivance which Charles Lamb speaks of in his Essay on Old China, as forming so great an addition to the pleasure of obtaining a thing at last. Howarth, May 22nd Since I came home, I have been very busy stitching. The little new room is got into order, and the green and white curtains are up. They exactly suit the papering, and look neat and clean enough. I had a letter a day or two since, announcing that Mr. Nichols comes to-morrow. I feel anxious about him, more anxious on one point than I dare quite express to myself. It seems he has again been suffering, sharply, from his rheumatic affection. I hear this not from him, but from another quarter. He was ill while I was in Manchester, and B. He uttered no complaint to me, dropped no hints on the subject. Alas, he was hoping he had got the better of it, and I know this contradiction of his hopes will sadden him. For unselfish reasons he did so earnestly wish this complaint might not become chronic. I fear, I fear, but if he is doomed to suffer, so much more will he need care and help. Well, come what may, God help and strengthen both him and me. I look forward to-tomorrow, with a mixture of impatience and anxiety. Mr. Bronte had a slight illness which alarmed her much. Besides all the weight of care involved in the household preparations, pressed on the bride in this case, not unpleasantly, only to the full occupation of her time. She was too busy to unpack her wedding-dresses for several days after they arrived from Halifax, yet not too busy to think of arrangements by which Miss Wooler's journey to be present at the marriage could be facilitated. I write to Miss Wooler to-day. Would it not be better, dear, if you and she could arrange to come to Howard's on the same day, arrive at Kiley by the same train, then I could order the cab to meet you at the station, and bring you on with your luggage? In this hot weather, walking would be quite out of the question, either for you or for her, and I know she would persist in doing it if left to herself, and arrive half-killed. I thought it better to mention this arrangement to you first, and then, if you liked it, you could settle the time, etc., with Miss Wooler, and let me know. Be sure and give me timely information that I may write to the Devonshire arms about the cab. Mr. Nichols is a kind, considerate fellow. With all his masculine faults, he enters into my wishes about having the thing done quietly in a way that makes me grateful, and if nobody interferes and spoils his arrangements, he will manage it so that not a soul in Howard shall be aware of the day. He is so thoughtful, too, about the ladies, that is, you and Miss Wooler. Anticipating, too, the very arrangements I was going to propose to him about providing for your departure, etc. He and Mr. S. come to, blank, the evening before. Write me a note to let me know they are there. Precisely at eight in the morning they will be in the church, and there we are to meet them. Mr. and Mrs. Grant are asked to the breakfast, not to the ceremony. It was fixed that the marriage was to take place on the 29th of June. Her two friends arrived at Howard's parsonage the day before, and the long summer afternoon and evening were spent by Charlotte in thoughtful arrangements for the morrow, and for her father's comfort during her absence from home. When all was finished, the trunk packed, the morning's breakfast arranged, the wedding dress laid out. Just at bedtime, Mr. Bronte announced his intention of stopping at home while the others went to church. What was to be done? Who was to give the bride away? There were only to be the officiating clergyman, the bride, and bridegroom, the bridesmaid, and Miss Wooler present. The prayer-book was referred to, and there it was seen that the rubric enjoins that the minister shall receive the woman from her father's, or friend's, hands, and that nothing is specified as to the sex of the friend. So Miss Wooler, ever kind in emergency, volunteered to give her old pupil away. The news of the wedding had slipped abroad before the little party came out of church, and many old and humble friends were there, seeing her look like a snowdrop, as they say. Her dress was white and broodered muslin, with a lace mantle and white bonnet trimmed with green leaves, which perhaps might suggest the resemblance to the pale, wintry flower. Mr. Nichols and she went to visit his friends and relations in Ireland, and made a tour by Calarney, Lengareff, Tarbert, Trelee, and Cork, seeing scenery of which she says, Some parts exceeded all I had ever imagined. I must say I like my new relations. My dear husband, too, appears in a new light in his own country. More than once I have had deep pleasure in hearing his praises on all sides. Some of the old servants and followers of the family tell me I am a most fortunate person, for that I have got one of the best gentlemen in the country. I trust I feel thankful to God for having enabled me to make what seems a right choice, and I pray to be enabled to repay as I ought the affectionate devotion of a truthful, honourable man. Henceforward the sacred doors of home are closed upon her married life. We, her loving friends, standing outside, caught occasional glimpses of brightness and pleasant, peaceful murmurs of sounds, telling of the gladness within, and we looked at each other and gently said, After a hard and long struggle, after many cares and many bitter sorrows, she is tasting happiness now. We thought of the slight astringencies of her character, and how they would turn to full ripe sweetness in that calm sunshine of domestic peace. We remembered her trials, and were glad in the idea that God had seen fit to wipe away the tears from her eyes. Those who saw her saw an outward change in her look, telling of inward things, as we thought, and we hoped, and we prophesied in our great love and reverence. But God's ways are not our ways. Here's some of the low murmurs of happiness we, who listened, heard. I really seem to have had scarcely a spare moment since that dim, quiet June morning, when you, E., and myself, all walked down to Howard's Church. Not that I have been worried or oppressed, but the fact is, my time is not my own now. Somebody else wants a good portion of it, and says, we must do so and so. We do so and so, accordingly, and it generally seems the right thing. We have had many collars from a distance, and latterly some little occupation in the way of preparing for a small village entertainment. Both Mr. Nichols and myself wished much to make some response for the hearty welcome and general goodwill shown by the parishioners on his return. Accordingly, the Sunday and day scholars and teachers, the church ringers, singers, etc., to the number of five hundred, were asked to see and supper in the schoolroom. They seemed to enjoy it much, and it was very pleasant to see their happiness. One of the villagers, in proposing my husband's health, described him as a consistent Christian and a kind gentleman. I owe the words touched me deeply, and I thought, as I know you would have thought had you been present, that to merit and win such a character was better than to earn either wealth or fame or power. I am disposed to echo that high but simple eulogyum. My dear father was not well when we returned from Ireland. I am, however, most thankful to say that he is better now. May God preserve him to us yet for some years. The wish for his continued life, together with a certain solicitude for his happiness and health, seems, I scarcely know why, even stronger in me now than before I was married. Papa has taken no duty since we returned. And each time I see Mr. Nichols put on gown or surplus, I feel comforted to think that this marriage has secured Papa good aid in his old age. September 19th Yes, I am thankful to say my husband is in improved health and spirits. It makes me content and grateful to hear him from time to time avow his happiness in the brief, plain phrase of sincerity. My own life is more occupied than it used to be. I have not so much time for thinking. I am obliged to be more practical. For my dear Arthur is a very practical as well as a very punctual and methodical man. Every morning he is in the national school by nine o'clock. He gives the children religious instruction till half past ten. Almost every afternoon he pays visits amongst the poor parishioners. Of course, he often finds a little work for his wife to do, and I hope she is not sorry to help him. I believe it is not bad for me that his bent should be so holy towards matters of life and active usefulness, so little inclined to the literary and contemplative. As to his continued affection and kind attentions, it does not become me to say much of them, but they neither change nor diminish. Her friends and bridesmaid came to pay them a visit in October. I was to have gone also, but I allowed some little obstacle to intervene to my lasting regrets. I say nothing about the war, but when I read of its horrors I cannot help thinking that it is one of the greatest curses that ever fell upon mankind. I trust it may not last long, for it really seems to me that no glory to be gained can compensate for the sufferings which must be endured. This may seem a little ignoble or unpatriotic, but I think that as we advance towards middle age, nobleness and patriotism have a different signification to us, to that which we accept while young. You kindly inquire after Papa, he is better, and seems to gain strength as the weather gets colder. Indeed, of late years, health has always been better in winter than in summer. We are all indeed pretty well. And, for my own part, it is long since I have known such comparative immunity from headache, etc., as during the last three months. My life is different from what it used to be. May God be thanked for it. I have a good, kind, attached husband, and every day my own attachment to him grows stronger. Late in the autumn Sir James K. Shuddleworth crossed the border hills that separate Lancashire from Yorkshire, and spent two or three days with them. About this time, Mr. Nichols was offered a living of much greater value than his curacy at Howarth, and in many ways the proposal was a very advantageous one, but he felt himself bound to Howarth as long as Mr. Bronte lived. Still, this offer gave his wife great and true pleasure, as a proof of the respect in which her husband was held. November 29 I intended to have written a line yesterday, but just as I was sitting down for the purpose, Arthur called to me to take a walk. We set off, not intending to go far, but, though wild and cloudy, it was fair in the morning, when we had got about half a mile on the moors, Arthur suggested the idea of the waterfall. After the melted snow, he said, it would be fine. I had often wished to see it in its winter power, so we walked on. It was fine indeed, a perfect torrent racing over the rocks, white and beautiful. It began to rain while we were watching it, and we returned home under a streaming sky. However, I enjoyed the walk inexpressibly, and would not have missed the spectacle on any account. She did not achieve this walk of seven or eight miles in such weather with impunity. She began to shiver soon after her return home in spite of every precaution, and had a bad, lingering sore throat and cold, with tongue about her, and made her thin and weak. Did I tell you that our poor little Flossie is dead? She 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. On Christmas Day, she and her husband walked to the poor old woman, whose calf she had been sent to seek in former and less happy days, carrying with them a great spice cake to make glad her heart. On Christmas Day, many a humble meal in Howard was made more plentiful by her gifts. Early in the new year, 1855, Mr. and Mrs. Nichols went to visit Sir James K. Shuddleworth at Gotharp. They only remained two or three days, but it so fell out that she increased her lingering cold by a long walk over damp ground in thin shoes. Soon after her return, she was attacked by new sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness. After this state of things had lasted for some time, she yielded to Mr. Nichols' wish that a doctor should be sent for. He came and assigned a natural cause for her miserable indisposition. A little patience, and all would go right. She, who was ever patient in illness, tried hard to bear up and bear on. But the dreadful sickness increased and increased till the very sight of food occasioned nausea. A wren would have starved on what she ate during those last six weeks, says one. Tappy's health had suddenly an utterly given way, and she died in this time of distress and anxiety respecting the last daughter of the house she had served so long. Martha tenderly waited on her mistress, and from time to time tried to cheer her with the thought of the baby that was coming. I daresay I shall be glad some time, she would say, but I am so ill, so weary. Then she took to her bed, too weak to sit up. From that last couch she wrote two notes, in pencil. The first, which has no date, is addressed to her own dear Nell. I must write one line out of my weary bed. The news of M's probable recovery came like a ray of joy to me. I am not going to talk of my sufferings. It would be useless and painful. I want to give you an assurance, which I know will comfort you, and that is that I find in my husband the tenderest nurse, the kindest support, the best earthly comfort that ever woman had. His patience never fails, and it is tried by sad days and broken nights. Write and tell me about Mrs. Blank's case. How long was she ill, and in what way? Papa, thank God, is better. Our poor old Tabby is dead and buried. Give my kind love to Miss Wooler. May God comfort and help you. C.B. Nichols The other also, in faint, faint pencil marks, was to her Brussels school fellow, February 15th. A few lines of acknowledgement your letter shall have, whether well or ill. At present I am confined to my bed with illness, and have been so for three weeks. Up to this period, since my marriage, I have had excellent health. My husband and I live at home with my father. Of course, I could not leave him. He is pretty well, better than last summer. No kinder, better husband than mine, it seems to me, there can be in the world. I do not want, now, for kind companionship, in health, and the tenderest nursing in sickness. Deeply, I sympathize in all you tell me about Dr. W., and your excellent mother's anxiety. I trust he will not risk another operation. I cannot write more now, for I am much reduced and very weak. God bless you all. Yours, affectionately. C.B. Nichols I do not think she ever wrote a line again. Long days and longer nights went by. Still the same relentless nausea and faintness, and still born on in patient trust. About the third week in March there was a change. A low, wandering delirium came on. And, in it, she begged constantly for food, and even for stimulants. She swallowed eagerly now, but it was too late. Awakening for an instant, from this stupor of intelligence, she saw her husband's woe-worn face and caught the sound of some murmured words of prayer that God would spare her. Oh! she whispered forth. I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us. We have been so happy. Early on Saturday morning, March 31st, the solemn tolling of Howard's church bell spoke forth the fact, of her death, to the villagers who had known her from a child and whose hearts shivered within them as they thought of the two sitting desolate and alone in the old grey house. End of Section 18 Recording by Katie Riley May 2009 Volume 2, Section 19 of the Life of Charlotte Bronte This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Cleggorn Gaskell Volume 2, Section 19 Chapter 14 I have always been much struck with a passage in Mr. Forster's Life of Goldsmith. Speaking of the scene after his death, the writer says, The staircase of Brick Court is said to have been filled with mourners, the reverse of domestic, women without a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friends but him they had come to weep for, outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city to whom he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. This came into my mind when I heard of some of the circumstances attendant on Charlotte's funeral. Few beyond that circle of hills knew that she, whom the nations praised far off, lay dead that Easter mooring. Of kith and kin she had more in the grave to which she was soon to be born than among the living. The two mourners, stunned with her great grief, desired not the sympathy of strangers. One member, out of most of the families in the parish, was bitten to the funeral. And it became an act of self-denial, in many a poor household, to give up to another the privilege of paying their last homage to her. And those who were excluded from the funeral train of mourners, thrown to churchyard and church, to see carried forth and laid beside her own people, her whom, not many months ago, they had looked at as a pale white bride entering on a new life with trembling happy hope. Among those humble friends who passionately grieved over the dead was a village girl who had been seduced some little time before but who had founds a holy sister in Charlotte. She had sheltered her with her help, her counsel, her strengthening words, had ministered to her needs in her time of trial. Bitter, bitter was the grief of this poor young woman when she heard that her friend was sick unto death, and deep is her mourning until this day. A blind girl, living some four miles from Howarth, loved Mrs. Nichols so dearly that, with many cries and entreaties, she implored those about her to lead her along the roads and over the more paths that she might hear the last solemn words, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, ensure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. Such were the mourners over Charlotte Bronte's grave. I have little more to say. If my readers find that I have not said enough, I have said too much. I cannot measure or judge of such a character as hers. I cannot map out vices and virtues and debatable land. One who knew her long and well, the Mary of this life, writes thus of her dear friend. She thought much of her duty, and had loftier and clearer notions of it than most people, and held fast to them with more success. It was done, it seems to me, with much more difficulty than people have of stronger nerves and better fortunes. All her life was but labor and pain, and she never threw down the burden for the sake of present pleasure. I don't know what use you can make of all I have said. I have written it with a strong desire to obtain appreciation for her. Yet, what does it matter? She herself appealed to the world's judgment for her use of some of the faculties she had, not the best, but still the only ones she could turn to strangers' benefit. They heartily, greedily enjoyed the fruits of her labors, and then found out she was much to be blamed for possessing such faculties. Why ask for a judgment on her from such a world? But I turned from the critical, unsympathetic public, inclined to judge harshly because they have only seen superficially and not thought deeply. I appealed to that larger and more solemn public who know how to look with tender humility at faults and errors, how to admire generously extraordinary genius, and how to reverence with warm, full hearts all noble virtue. To that public I commit the memory of Charlotte Bronte. End of Section 19. Recording by Katie Riley. May 2009. End of Volume 2 of The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Clegghorn-Gascol.