Romancing Miss Bronte Read online

  At the first perusal of your letter I felt only shame and regret that I had ever ventured to trouble you with my crude rhapsody; I felt a painful heat rise to my face when I thought of the quires of paper I had covered with what once gave me so much delight, but which now was only a source of confusion.

  I know the first letter I wrote to you was all senseless trash from beginning to end; but I am not altogether the idle, dreaming being it would seem to denote. I am the eldest daughter of a clergyman who has sacrificed his small means so that I might be educated in Brussels. I thought it therefore my duty, when I left school, to become a governess. In that capacity I find enough to occupy my thoughts all day long, and my head and hands too, without having a moment’s time for one dream of the imagination. In the evenings, I confess, I do think but I never trouble anyone else with my thoughts. I carefully avoid any appearance of preoccupation and eccentricity which might lead others in the household to suspect the nature of my pursuits.

  I have endeavored not only to observe all the duties a woman ought to fulfill, but to feel deeply interested in them. I don’t always succeed, for sometimes when I’m teaching or sewing I would rather be reading or writing; but I try to deny myself; and my father—who has since childhood counseled me in the same tone as you have done—has rewarded my privation with approbation.

  Once more allow me to thank you with sincere gratitude. I trust I shall never more feel ambitious to see my name in print; if the wish should rise, I’ll look at Southey’s letter, and suppress it.

  Throughout the years that followed Charlotte continued to ride the fence between ambition and self-denial, and it was a balancing act fraught with constant tension. She was no rebel. She, too, subscribed to the powerful convention that it was not becoming for a lady (certainly not a Christian lady) to seek glory or recognition; but she was equally convinced of her own intelligence and of her elevated position in the clan as Branwell’s equal. There might have been a happy compromise if Branwell had succeeded. Ambition might have been appeased vicariously if only her brother had lived up to his side of the bargain. But he did not.

  During the final months of that turbulent summer following Branwell’s dismissal, she watched the once powerful men around her gradually fail, their authority eroded by blindness and drunkenness. Certainly she mourned (even resented) their failure, but out of loss rose a new possibility. A new role for herself.

  Surely there was justification for ambition when all the men in your life let you down.

  “Emmy,” Charlotte began, looking up from the tea towel she was hemming, “do read something of your poetry to us this evening, dearest. That would cheer me out of my doldrums, I think.”

  Emily lay on her stomach on the hearthrug, feet in the air and chin in her hands, reading a book by candlelight. Keeper lay sprawled at her side. She resisted for a moment, then turned a suspicious look on Charlotte.

  “My poetry is not what you would judge cheerful.”

  Charlotte hesitated before replying. “No, but it always fascinated me. It’s been years since we’ve read any of our verse to one another. I’ve quite lost track of your Gondal characters—Henry, Juliet Augusteena, Catherine Navarre. I daresay they must have changed.”

  “No, not changed,” Emily replied. “New adventures and new intrigues, but they’re quite the same.” She turned back to her book.

  They listened for a moment to the wind’s haunting sighs and moans.

  Anne rose from the sofa to fold the bedsheet she’d been mending. “There. That’s finished. Another hole patched.”

  Charlotte put down her sewing. “Here. Let me help.”

  She rose, stepped over the sleeping spaniel, and took one end of the sheet from Anne.

  “Emily, have you ever considered publishing your poetry?” Charlotte asked.

  “What did you say?” she replied, rolling onto her side. Keeper—distressed by the tone of her voice—lifted his head and followed her warily with his eyes.

  “Publishing your verse. You might consider it.” Charlotte’s voice softened. “It’s really quite exceptional.”

  Emily twisted herself around and sat up. “You’ve been reading my poetry?” she accused sharply.

  “It was quite unintentional. I came across your notebook while I was changing the sheets on your bed.”

  “And you opened it and read it?”

  “Yes, I did, dearest,” she said soothingly. “It was wrong of me, but I was curious. We used to share so much—we don’t anymore.”

  Emily closed her book and rose swiftly to her feet, spooking both dogs, who scrambled out of her way. Towering over Charlotte, she said, “My notebooks are private. You have no right. What did you do with it?”

  “I put it back of course. Now, would you listen to what I have to say?” She reached for Emily’s hand, but Emily pulled away.

  “What? You want to publish my poetry for the sake of a few miserable shillings? To be ridiculed and mocked by fools?”

  “Emily, dearest, I’m trying to tell you that what you’ve written is of considerable merit … and should you be interested in publishing—”

  “You know perfectly well I don’t give a tinker’s damn for your ambitious schemes. You wanted us to go to Brussels, I went to Brussels. You wanted a school, I agreed to a school. If you want to publish poetry, then publish your own. But I would sooner walk stark naked through Haworth than lay Gondal before the world.”

  She stormed out of the room.

  Charlotte had gone white and stood trembling in the wake of her sister’s wrath.

  “Oh goodness,” she said to Anne. “It’s going to be quite unpleasant around here for a few days.”

  Anne motioned to the sofa. “Come sit back down. It’s all right. She’ll get over it.”

  Charlotte’s hands were trembling as she picked up her needle.

  Anne asked, “Do you really think it merits publication?”

  “She hasn’t shared it with you?”

  “No. Not in years.”

  “It was completely unlike anything I’ve ever read—certainly it’s nothing like the sort of feeble, soppy poetry women generally write. Really, it was quite extraordinary, and powerful.”

  Anne thought quietly for a moment and then said, “You should trust your judgment, Tally.”

  “But she’s so frightfully stubborn. She always opposes me. Even when I have her best interests at heart.”

  “You know how to win her over. You’ll think of a way.”

  That night before she went to bed, Charlotte knocked on Emily’s door. Her room stood at the top of the stairs above the entry hall; it was tiny—barely large enough for a small bed, a dresser, and a chair. It had once been their playroom and, later, Branwell’s room. Then he went away and Emily made it undisputedly her own.

  Charlotte opened the door a crack.

  “May I come in?”

  There was no answer. Charlotte opened the door wider.

  Keeper, who was curled on the rug next to Emily’s bed, let out a low rumbling growl.

  “It’s only me, boy. It’s okay.”

  Charlotte stepped in and stood in the darkness. “Are you asleep?”

  There was a rustle of sheets but no reply.

  Moonlight fell into the room along the edges of the shutters. Charlotte could see her form curled in the narrow bed just beneath the window.

  “Emmy, when I found your journal, I glanced at it just out of curiosity. I had no intention of prying. But after the first few lines, I couldn’t put it down.”

  Charlotte groped her way to the chair; she gathered up the jumble of petticoats and shawls and sat down, piling it all on her lap.

  “Your feelings are peculiar, Emily. Peculiar in a rare, beautiful way that very few people see—because you don’t want to be seen,” she said. “And your poetry is very much like you. I read the verses aloud to myself and I fancied I could hear a sort of wild melancholy and musicality. It was your love of nature and music, all of it wrapped in thi
s clear, condensed, and very powerful language.”

  She paused. She heard Emily rustle in the darkness. Listening.

  “What is so unique and special about you comes forth with such genuineness, and such vigor, I should like all the world to read it, because then they would see my sister for who and what she truly is. There is nothing there to incite ridicule, Emmy, only the very highest praise.”

  There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the keening autumn wind.

  Emily replied dryly, “Go away.”

  With that, she buried her head in her pillow and pulled the covers around her ears.

  Charlotte sat in the darkness, gathering her thoughts. “When we were children we dreamed of being authors, and if we have done anything with our lives so far, it is this: we write. If our other dreams fail, our dreams of school and travel, it’s of no importance. If none of us ever marries, it will be no great disappointment to any of us. But I should not like to regret that we once had a chance at this, and we let it slip by.”

  After a long silence, when there was no response, Charlotte whispered, “Well, good night then.”

  Anne had already changed in to her nightgown when Charlotte came to their room.

  “Did she agree to it?”

  “No.”

  When Charlotte crawled into bed, she found a notebook on her pillow.

  “It’s mine,” Anne said shyly. “I thought, since Emily’s poetry brought you such pleasure, you might like to read some of mine.”

  The next day Emily punished Charlotte with a good dose of frosty silence. She skirted the offending sister all morning, aloof and unyielding. After she had ironed a small pile of linens, she laced on her boots and disappeared until the afternoon with a book of German poetry in her skirt pocket.

  “Miss Emily’s in a tiff this morning, ain’t she?” said Tabby, who heard little but noticed everything.

  But Charlotte was determined, and she waited out the day in strategic silence. That evening they gathered for family prayers in their father’s study, and then the three sisters retired to the dining room.

  As Charlotte sat mending one of her father’s nightshirts by the light of a sputtering candle, she glanced up through her round spectacles. “Anne, do we have enough muslin to make Papa a new nightshirt? Look at this …” She held the garment up to the candlelight. “It’s threadbare—I daresay it’s a veritable work of art—all this cross-stitching …”

  Emily, sprawled on the hearthrug, spoke up for the first time all day. “That’s because Sally Mosley treats our laundry like it was her husband. Haven’t you ever noticed the way she mutters to herself when she’s raking away on the washboard?”

  Anne and Charlotte exchanged a glance.

  Charlotte folded up the nightshirt and then, as though steeling herself, perched on the edge of the sofa with her hands folded in her lap.

  “Anne, you gave me an idea, last night.”

  Playing the innocent, Anne said, “Oh? What was that?”

  “What if we were to publish our poetry together?”

  Charlotte turned to Emily, who had not so much as twitched. “Anne brought me some of her poems last night. I was quite impressed. And I started thinking … what if we published together? Each of us would contribute a certain number of poems—”

  Emily muttered. “Publish if you wish. But I’ll have none of it.”

  “Even as a means to secure our future?”

  Emily frowned. “We have our railway shares.”

  “Hardly enough to live off after Papa dies. Truly, Emmy dearest, what do you imagine will happen to us after he goes?”

  “I don’t think about it.”

  “Yes, which is why I must.”

  Anne said, “Oh, Emmy, don’t be so fierce. It would be nice to have a little extra to take a holiday together from time to time. I’d love to go back to Scarborough. I’ve only been when I had the charge of all the Misses Robinson, and I was never at liberty to do as I wished. I should so like to go with you. You would love the sea.”

  Charlotte said, “But I quite understand your reluctance to open yourself to the ridicule of fools, for that is certainly what will happen. It will happen to all of us. I say this in the spirit of honesty and openness because we must be true to one another and ourselves, for if not, who can we trust?”

  At that moment, they were brought to their feet by a loud noise on the stairs, the sound of someone falling and glass breaking, followed by loud cursing.

  “Charlotte!” came a pathetic cry.

  They rushed out and found their father in his nightshirt sprawled in a heap at the foot of the stairs.

  He was trying to pick himself up, but there was glass all around him and the smell of sweet sherry where he had dropped the bottle.

  “I’m here, Papa,” Charlotte said as she stepped cautiously around the broken glass and the puddle of sherry. “Anne, fetch the broom and a pail.”

  “Curse these eyes! Curse them! Wretched miserable eyes …”

  Anne cleaned up the glass while Charlotte and Emily took him to his room and helped him find a clean nightshirt. Then they put him to bed. They returned to the dining room and sat in silence for a while. They were all shaken.

  “Poor Papa,” Anne whispered.

  “Do you think anyone’s noticed?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not. This village would crucify him.”

  “He’s bored. That’s why he drinks. He’s bored and frustrated.”

  “Poor Papa.”

  The following morning, true to habit, Emily rose at seven and dressed in the dim light. After she had let out the dogs, she came back upstairs and found Anne and Charlotte in their room.

  She closed the door and stood in the pale morning light clutching her shawl. Anne looked up from making the bed.

  “We cannot use our real names.”

  Charlotte started, her fingers poised over the ties at her waist. “So you’ll do it?”

  “On the condition that we remain anonymous.” Her features were fixed in that stern look of intimidation. “I should be horrified to be so exposed. To have our privacy violated.”

  “Yes, I understand, but—”

  Anne said, “I suppose Charlotte could use her own name—”

  “No. People would catch on.”

  Charlotte’s face collapsed with disappointment. “Might you reconsider—”

  “I’m quite firm about this, Charlotte. We cannot tell anyone. Not Papa, not Branwell. You certainly can’t tell Ellen. She can’t keep a secret. Nor Mary—”

  “But Mary’s on the other side of the world.”

  “The word would get back to her family. We would have to publish under pseudonyms and keep the entire business our secret.”

  Anne said, “How will we hide it from Papa?”

  “He sees us writing all the time. He just doesn’t have the foggiest notion what we’re doing with it. Nor does he care.” She shrugged. “He can’t see anymore, anyway.”

  Emily turned her stern look on Charlotte. “You must swear to it.”

  After a long hesitation, Charlotte said, “All right, then.”

  “Go on, do it. Raise your hand.”

  “All right, I swear. To secrecy.”

  “Absolute and utter, without exception.”

  “Emily Jane, that’s enough. Don’t be so fierce.”

  “We could be whomever we wish to be,” Anne said.

  Charlotte pulled her dress over her head, and with her chin in her chest as she buttoned up her bodice she muttered, “Well, we could be men then, couldn’t we?”

  “I suppose we could.”

  “Or at least choose names that could be masculine.”

  “Like when we were children,” Anne smiled wistfully. “When we were Parry and Ross and Wellington.”

  “But brothers. With the same family name.”

  There was a certain aura of romance about it, since the work had to be done under a cloak of secrecy. Throughout the short winter d
ays and long evenings that followed, they scurried back and forth from kitchen to dining room to bedroom, trawling through old copybooks behind closed doors, reading aloud and advising one another, rewriting with a fresh critical eye. Clumsy, rambling pieces were restructured; others were pruned and polished. During those hours the dimly lighted parsonage hummed with energy. This was no tedious labor performed out of duty. This was a calling. The hours flew by. Time seemed to disappear. Industry brought with it fresh hope, and hope fueled their writing.

  They left to Charlotte the tedious correspondence with publishers, and when at long last they found one who would take the work on condition that they assume the printing costs, they agreed to pay the expenses out of the small inheritance from their aunt, hoping to make a little from the sales and perhaps win some critical acclaim.

  But more important, their little publishing effort drew them back to their passion for storytelling. The process of sifting through their stories of Angria and Gondal generated new ideas. Mature ideas, drawn from observations of real life, deepened by personal experience and passions profoundly felt. What if? they asked themselves and one another. Why not? they thought. So by the time the proofs for their small volume of poetry arrived from the printer the following spring, they had each plunged headlong into their first novel.

  It was natural that Charlotte’s novel should be born out of heartache and the need to live again moments that would never be matched in intensity of feeling. For years she had been writing the story in her head, in flashes of scenes and dialogue, and by the time she sat down to write, she knew exactly where the narrative would take her. She would revisit Brussels; she would refashion her own story of unrequited love in the way writers have that gives them the power to transform a painful reality; she would create for herself the one thing she so desperately desired: the condition of loving deeply and being loved in return.

  If Arthur began to fall just a little in love with her that spring, it was because she had slipped into that mystifying state of grace where she could move untouched by all the drama swirling around her. Always light-footed, she seemed to Arthur to fairly float down the lane in front of his eyes, and when she greeted him in the hall of the parsonage or poured his cup of tea, her eyes seemed to conceal some hidden joy. He thought her detached and vaguely wild of spirit, like a half-tamed creature trapped in the body of a quaint little clergyman’s daughter.