Romancing Miss Bronte (7 page)

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 days 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.

T
hat winter, correspondence flew back and forth between C. Brontë, Esquire, of Haworth and the London publishers of Aylott & Jones. Their father was blind and Branwell far too self-absorbed to realize what was going on under his very nose. His senses were often dulled by gin, and when sober, he was irritable and obnoxious, and the sisters shunned his presence. He would occasionally happen on them in the dining room in the afternoon or evening, scribbling away in their little copybooks, and he thought they were just as they had always been. It irked him that they took no interest in the epic poem he was writing about Morley Hall, or the piece he had published in the
Halifax Guardian
.

In February, Charlotte put on her heavy shawl, concealing the two paper-wrapped parcels that contained the fair copy of their poems, and quietly slipped down the hill in the cold to deliver it to the postmaster’s cottage. When she returned, she found Emily and Anne waiting upstairs in the front bedroom, where they had lighted a fire.

“It’s done,” Charlotte whispered as she closed the door behind her.

“Lock the door,” Emily said.

When Charlotte had done so, Emily whipped out the bottle of port she had been concealing behind her skirt.

“Look what I took from the cellar!”

“Oh, you are one for mischief!” But Charlotte’s reproof was all bluff, and she wore a broad smile as she hung up her bonnet and smoothed down her hair.

Emily opened the bottle and poured each of them a little of the port,
and they gathered in a circle before the fire and raised their glasses to one another.

“To the brothers Bell,” Charlotte pronounced solemnly. “Ellis, Acton, and Currer.”

“To the Bells!”

“May their humble efforts meet with some small degree of success.”

They started at the sudden sound of a door opening. Branwell had emerged from his room, and they stood frozen with their glasses in their hands, waiting while he clambered down the stairs to the kitchen for his breakfast.

When he had gone, Emily pulled a stool up to the fire and sat, warming her feet and sipping her port. She was quiet and reflective, but she wore a look of satisfaction that was almost a smile.

“We lit a fire,” Anne said apologetically.

“I think the expense is quite justified,” Charlotte reassured her.

“Oh, I do hope it all comes to something.”

“Even if it doesn’t, we shall have our verse in print, and as we’ve seen, that is no small accomplishment.”

“I had no idea it would be this difficult to find someone to publish us, even at our own expense.”

“Well, it’s done, and we have reason to be proud of ourselves.” She held out her glass and Anne smiled and refilled it.

“I passed Mr. Nicholls coming out of the school,” Charlotte said, “and I confess I was in such a spirited mood, I quite chatted the socks off him.” She sipped her port, remembering the baffled look on his face. “He honestly did not know what to make of me.”

“I think he rather likes you,” Anne said.

“Likes me?” Charlotte laughed. “He thinks I’m an old maid. Of no interest to him whatsoever.”

“Ellis, more port?” Anne said.

Emily twisted around on her stool, holding out her glass. Her face was flushed from the heat of the fire. She said, “I was thinking, we should move forward, just as we discussed. We must not stop here.”

“You mean with our novels?” Charlotte said.

“Yes.” She turned her gaze back to the fire and said quietly, “It really would be quite wonderful, wouldn’t it, if we could earn our living like this? Doing what we’ve done this past year. We would all be at home together, and we could take care of Papa. We wouldn’t need a school.” She took a sip of her port and added, “I never liked the idea, really. I didn’t like the idea of having strangers live here with us.”

“Oh, this is much better,” Charlotte said, trying to contain her enthusiasm.

“We owe you a good deal of gratitude, Charlotte,” Anne pointed out. “You’ve managed all the business—finding us a publisher, and dealing with the printing, and the bank drafts. It was much more work than I had thought it would be.”

“Yes, it’s all worked out rather well, hasn’t it.” Charlotte spoke quietly, trying to conceal her sense of inner triumph.

They fell into a discussion of their novels—how they should submit them and to whom they might apply. Emily was concerned that the publishers might wish to meet them.

“Branwell knows these things,” Emily said. “He was working on a novel last year. He knows all sorts of writers and artists in Halifax. Perhaps we could ask him—without letting on what we’re up to.”

“What Branwell knows, we can find out,” Charlotte said flatly. “We managed on our own with our poems. We can do it with our novels. Aylott and Jones could give us some guidance. I’ll write to them.”

They heard their brother on the stairs, calling for Charlotte: “Where is everyone? Damnably quiet in this house. Where are all the women?”

Emily snatched the bottle and stashed it behind the bed.

Charlotte opened the door.

“There you are! Good Lord, what are you all doing up here? And you’ve got a fire going. Mustn’t let the old man see that.”

He had dressed in a hurry, and he had the irritable, anxious look of a man who had gone too long without a drink.

“What do you want, Branwell?”

“I need ten shillings.”

“Ten shillings?” Charlotte started.

“I have business in Halifax … I need money for the train and my expenses,” he shot back impatiently.

“It doesn’t cost ten shillings to go to Halifax.”

“I’m staying with Leyland for several days. I have to pay him something for my meals, and I have some other business—”

“I don’t have that much money on me. And I certainly wouldn’t hand it over without asking Papa, and he’s out at a meeting with the trustees.”

“Papa said I was to have it, he told me last night … and then he forgot.”

“Then you’ll have to wait until he returns.”

Branwell hesitated, his forehead plunging into a deep frown. He reached into a pocket and withdrew a bundle of Lydia Robinson’s letters that he carried with him everywhere. Then he dug back into his pocket and fished around, finally coming up with a few coins. He spread his palm, and his hands shook while he counted his pennies.

“Then just give me a shilling for now,” he muttered in an unsteady voice. He was trying not to plead.