The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte by James Tully Read Free Book Online Page A

meant so much to the family and me that I like to have some little mementoes of those times about me, especially as they serve to remind me of the other happenings that I had better get on and tell about.
    [] Every aspect of his new position and surroundings must have come as something of a cultural upheaval to Nicholls. This was his first curacy and, with little idea of what to expect, he seems to have been quite shocked at the cheerlessness of the Parsonage, his lodgings, and Haworth village. (Knowing what the Parsonage was like, I think it is safe to assume that Brown’s house was even more undesirable: at least the outside privy at the former was a double-seater!)
    Nicholls was a bright young man, only recently come from undergraduate life, and the civilization and delights of Dublin. There is no evidence that he had any sense of vocation, and it seems likely that, as with so many before and since, he entered the Church only because it presented the prospect of a secure and undemanding life. Now he was not at all happy with his surroundings, especially as the lack of professional people meant that he was without any congenial male company.
    It was therefore almost inevitable that he should have been drawn to the opposite sex for solace and companionship and, as it would have been unthinkable for him to have been associated with any of the village girls, that he should have turned his attention to the Brontë sisters.
    His first approaches were to Charlotte, and rumours about the couple were still going the rounds over a year later. Indeed, in 1846, Ellen Nussey actually asked Charlotte if it was true that she was engaged to Nicholls.
    Charlotte’s reply was scathing: ‘A cold far-away sort of civility are the only terms on which I have ever been with Mr Nicholls.’ In that same letter, and still referring to curates, she stated that: ‘They regard me as an old maid, and I regard them,
one and all
, as highly uninteresting, narrow and unattractive specimens of the coarser sex.’ The redolence of sour grapes is unmistakable, and perhaps smacks a little of the lady protesting too much.
    She may very well have thought little of Nicholls a year before, but then she was still hoping against hope that something would come of her relationship with M. Héger. By 1846, however, the case was altered. She had been forced to the realization that there was no future for her with her erstwhile lover, and would have welcomed any overtures from her father’s assistant. The trouble was that, by then, she was too late – he had turned his attentions elsewhere.
    Maybe Nicholls first made a set at Charlotte because he detected her sensuality, and he may also have heard whispers about M. Héger. However, he does not appear to have been very distraught at being rebuffed, perhaps because Charlotte was not exactly a personable woman.
    Instead – Martha tells us – he sought consolation with Emily, who was the only other daughter at home at that time. She was his age and, being the sort of woman that she was, she had been kinder to him than Charlotte from the outset.
    There can be no doubt but that Emily was the most attractive of the three sisters. In later years, former servants at the Parsonage would declare that she was the prettiest of the children, with beautiful eyes and sensuous lips. She was also the tallest, and had ‘a lithesome graceful figure’. Nevertheless she was a very reserved young lady.
    It has been suggested by more than one writer that she had lesbian tendencies. I cannot subscribe to that view. All the signs are that she was a passionate woman, but that her shyness with strangers was so pronounced that any male overtures had been doomed from the start. That had not prevented her from keeping a watching brief over her sisters’ affaires however – which was a habit that had earned her the nickname of ‘The Major’ from Anne’s admirer, Mr Weightman.
    It