Romancing Miss Bronte (10 page)

Charlotte said nothing more to coerce Emily to finish the last bit of tedious work to ready her novel for publication. She knew Emily could not be persuaded by reason or threat, or anything in between.

Several days later Charlotte found her sister sitting in the shade of the cherry tree, reading a book, with Keeper’s huge head cradled in her lap.

“You are quite good at hiding, dearest. Where’s Anne?”

“Gone to the market with Martha,” Emily replied, her nose still in her book.

Charlotte waved the letter under her nose. “We have news. From Aylott and Jones.”

Emily laid down her book and looked up.

“I’m afraid the sales have been disappointing. They’ve only sold two copies of the book.”

“Two? That’s all?”

Charlotte turned over a wicker laundry basket, tucked up her skirts, and sat down beside her sister. “However,” she hurried to say, “it has finally been reviewed.” She unfolded the clippings that had been enclosed in the letter. “By the
Athenaeum
and the
Critic
.” She peered over her spectacles at her sister and said with a smile, “Don’t be so glum, Emmy. The reviews are good. The
Critic
’s review is positively eulogistic.”

“Is it?” Emily said quietly. Charlotte knew she was trying to hide how much it meant to her.

“Yes, truly, dearest. They call our poems genuine and fresh.” She leaned forward, laid her hand on Emily’s knee, and beamed up at her. “But the lion’s share of praise goes to Ellis Bell, and that’s as it should be.”

Charlotte read the reviews aloud. The critics hailed Emily’s poetry as “an inspiration which may yet find an audience in the outer world … a fine quaint spirit which may have things to speak that men will be glad to hear—and an evident power of wing …”

Charlotte glanced up from time to time to watch how Emily’s face—always so sullen and grave—came alive at this praise. It was all the more meaningful because the critic knew nothing about her.

“And there’s something else,” Charlotte said as she passed the letter and the reviews to Emily. “There’s a gentleman who wants our autographs. A Mr. Enoch from Warwick. He bought one of the only two copies sold.”

Emily smiled broadly. “We have an admirer?”

“Yes, we do, and I think we should oblige Mr. Enoch as quickly as possible. He may very well be the only admirer we’ll ever have.”

That evening, after their father and the servants had gone up to bed, they took up a sheet of fine stationery and signed the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Then Emily took out her penknife, whittled her
quill to a perfect point, and began the task of making a clean, legible copy of
Wuthering Heights
.

Although she would never admit as much to her sister, Charlotte had been deeply impressed by the powerful human drama of
Wuthering Heights
, the passionate love between Heathcliff and Cathy, its peculiar inevitability and mythic quality. She was familiar with many of Emily’s Gondal poems and old narratives from which her sister had drawn her novel, but the final work had indeed haunted her—not merely because of its brutality and amorality, but because of its undeniable power. It had forced her to recognize the sad inadequacy of her own novel.

The Professor
had been finished, but the work had left her deeply unsatisfied. For all the silent love she had carried for Heger and the never-voiced heartache of separation and loss, she had not come close to expressing the power of her feelings. She had taken up the voice of her male protagonist and given very little of herself to the French lacemaker, and all her passion was lost somewhere in between. She had painted a superficial portrait, a simple narrative of wish fulfillment, when what she had wanted to produce was something urgent, true, and personal. Instinctively, she was seeking a narrative—impassioned like poetry—that might paint the workings of memory and the unconscious mind, all the powerful formative forces of her whole experience fused into images, emerging symbolically in the fullness of the imagination.

That summer, throughout the long, warm evenings as she sat near the open window darning her father’s socks or mending one of Emily’s petticoats, her thoughts returned to images that had always given her so much pleasure: a grand Gothic hall in an isolated place, a subservient young woman and a master. But as the ideas gave birth to a story, a new kind of heroine emerged. This young woman would have passion and soul—she would be a governess perhaps, poor and plain like herself, but neither slavish nor meek in spirit. She would be inferior in rank to her master, but in every other way his equal. She would name her Jane Eyre.

T
oward the end of August Charlotte accompanied her father on the forty-mile journey to Manchester to have his eyes examined. The surgeon declared the cataract sufficiently hardened to be removed, a procedure that would need to be done without anesthesia; they would administer only a little belladonna to desensitize the eye. Afterward, her father would be confined to bed in absolute darkness and stillness for at least a month.

They remained in Manchester, and Charlotte spent the next few days finding lodgings in town and hiring a nurse. By the end of the week she was sitting in a stifling-hot waiting room while the surgeon cut into her father’s eye.

Finally the door opened, and an assistant ushered her into the back surgery. Her father was sitting up, both eyes bandaged. They had removed the high white neckcloth he habitually wore, and it seemed to Charlotte that they had stripped him of his pride and rectitude. As his sight had diminished, he had sat in the gloom of his study, increasingly irascible, impatient, and demanding, so that at times Charlotte had felt his presence like a weight upon her slight frame, tied to her at every moment of the day, keeping her as much a prisoner as he had become. Now, with his long pale neck exposed and his eyes swathed in gauze, she was alarmed by how vulnerable he seemed, how this powerful man had been reduced to a childlike helplessness.

“The operation was successful,” the doctor announced with solemn reassurance. “His sight will soon return to normal. I must say, Miss
Brontë, your father was quite courageous. Truly, he was an exceptional patient. Very steady. Didn’t so much as flinch.”

“Remarkable,” Patrick boomed, “what our surgeons are able to accomplish these days.” Then, gesturing blindly in the air: “My cravat, Charlotte. Get me my cravat. If I sit like this for much longer I’ll catch a cold for sure.”

Charlotte found the long strip of white silk and wound it carefully around his neck. She helped him while he fumbled with his coat and guided him down the steps and outside, to the waiting carriage. He was more than six feet tall, and she came just above his elbow.

When the carriage jerked into motion, Charlotte reached for her father’s hand and gripped it firmly.

“Everything’s going to be fine now, Papa,” she said with quiet relief.

“Oh, Charlotte,” he said in a solemn voice, “would that it were so easy to remove sin from the heart as it is to remove a hardening of the eye. With a sharp scalpel and a little burning, and several weeks in confined penitence, we see clearly again—no sin hardening the heart, nothing to cloud the light of Christ.”

She gave his hand a squeeze. Suddenly the anxiety that had weighed on her for days—anticipating his surgery, the fear of losing him, the troubles of caring for him in his blindness—swept through her with a rush of emotion, and tears flooded her eyes.

The nurse was quiet and efficient, and there was little for Charlotte to do except prepare their meals. She was not much of a cook, but she managed to put food on the table and no one complained. For most of the day she sat at the window, where a few rays of light filtered through the gap in the curtains. She would knit for a few moments, and then she would pause and stare into the darkness for long hours, until the light began to fade and it was time to prepare their tea. There were no distractions, no one to inconvenience her or make demands on her, and in the quiet hours she turned to her imagination. This was her most precious companion, her great comforter—a means to defy the harsh reality
of her existence. In her imaginary world she could change the natural order of things; life could be keenly enjoyed and needs fully satisfied. Over the long days spent in a sunless and silent room while Charlotte waited for her father’s eyes to heal, Jane Eyre would make herself seen and heard.

Charlotte had little control over what emerged. She believed in the supremacy of the unfettered imagination. The inspired poet never paused for reflection, did not think about unity; ideas came naturally. In that peculiar light of creation she returned to her childhood, to long-suppressed memories of their days at Cowan Bridge. To Maria and Elizabeth, her long-dead sisters.

Maria had been ten when she went away to Cowan Bridge. After their mother’s death, Aunt Branwell had kept the house and ruled the servants, but Maria was the one whose counsel they heeded, whose model of goodness they followed. She was wise beyond her years and the most beloved of them all. It wrenched Charlotte’s heart to see her go. Eight-year-old Charlotte had stood on the tiny garden plot in front of the parsonage watching Maria and Elizabeth wave good-bye from the back of a cart, Maria wearing her own pale brand of courage and a determination to accept any hardship Providence threw her way. Watching her, Charlotte thought of a lamb driven off to slaughter, a sweet-faced girl with long, skinny legs dressed in a straw bonnet and a thin blue cloth coat, gifts from the charity ladies in Haworth. She gripped a small, scuffed bag. No one would have guessed by looking at her how powerfully intellectual and talented she was.

Three weeks later, Charlotte was driven off to Cowan Bridge by her father, and then late in November little Em, who was only six, was sent away to join them.

She recalled her first meal the day of her arrival. A bowl of rice pudding was passed down to her. Charlotte took a mouthful and gagged.

The girl next to her gave her a sly look and whispered, “I know, it’s
sour. The milk’s always sour here. But if you don’t eat it they won’t give you breakfast, and the bread’s the only tolerable thing you’ll get all day. The only thing that isn’t rotten, I mean.”

Charlotte looked down the table to her sister Maria.

If Maria swallows, I shall swallow
, she thought, forcing another spoonful to her lips. Maria was chattering away to the girl next to her and didn’t seem to be bothered by the disgusting concoction. The second spoonful stuck in Charlotte’s throat. She watched another girl spit hers into a handkerchief; Charlotte did the same and emptied her handkerchief in the yard when they went outdoors.

This was a charity school, and Charlotte expected frugality; her own home was austere and sparsely furnished, and she had watched Aunt calculate the flour and meat down to the penny. But the parsonage was a clean, tidy place and their food was properly cooked. Here, despite all the tricks she pulled on herself, summoning up images of roast pigeon or treacle or holding her breath while she chewed, there was nothing she could do to keep the food down. The hot pot was not beef but only fat, gristle, and potatoes, boiled to the color of slate. There were always disgusting things floating in the porridge, hairs and unidentifiable bits you couldn’t chew. One night, after the others were asleep, the girl in the bed next to Charlotte’s whispered that she had seen the cook take the ladle out of the pig-swill tub and use it to measure out the milk. They were all hungry, and one girl was quite skilled at stealing bread, but this Charlotte refused to do.

Every Sunday they traipsed two miles through snow and wet fields with wooden pattens strapped to their thin-soled shoes to attend Reverend Wilson’s morning service, often staying for the afternoon one as well. They sat shivering through long hours of prayer in the damp church, their lips blue and fingers numb. Their feet never dried out, and at night their toes were raw and stiff from the cold.

Beatings were to be expected, although there seemed to be no justice in them. Maria, sharp and clever as she was, often forgot to clean her nails or tie her pinafore, so she was frequently under the cane, even when
she was very ill and had barely the strength to stand. This turned Charlotte’s stomach; she burned with indignation and longed to cry out in rebellion.

She remembered watching her sister drag her thin legs over the side of the bed, reaching for her dress.

“But I deserved it, Charlotte.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“But I did. I’m far too careless about my appearance, and that will not do in a governess. It’s for my own good.”

“You’re ill, Maria. How can they expect—”

Maria began to cough, deep, rasping coughs that brought up blood and stained her handkerchief a sharp crimson red.

“I cannot bear seeing you treated like this.”

“Don’t be weak, Charlotte. It’s silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to bear.”

No one wanted to hear her complaints, not God nor Mr. Wilson, the director—they were, after all, one and the same. She would certainly never complain to her father.

Charlotte was a grave and industrious child, and her needlework was always meticulous, which seemed to please the teachers. She thought if she was quiet enough, and small and plain enough, they would not take notice of her, although she suspected that every hint of feeling was visible on her face. It would become her habit to look down so that people could not read her mind.

It required a steely fortitude to make it through the winter. Maria grew weaker and weaker, and in February she was sent home. With the changing winds of spring, a fever swept through the school. The girls fell ill with terrifying rapidity, and the doctor pressed Reverend Wilson to remove them from the premises to a healthier location. Grudgingly he consented; those who were still left standing would be whisked away to a town on the Lancashire coast. It was all done in great haste. As they waited on the front lawn for the carriages to be loaded, Charlotte saw Elizabeth, too weak to walk, emerge from the school on the arm of a
strange, dour-faced woman. She was lifted into a gig and driven away. Charlotte, in a panic, broke away and found Miss Andrews to beg an explanation; she was told only that her sister was too ill to accompany them and had been sent home.