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Emily Bronte, a non-fiction book by A. Mary F. Robinson |
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Chapter 5. Going To School |
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_ CHAPTER V. GOING TO SCHOOL Emily was now sixteen years old, and though the people in the village called her "t' cleverest o' t' Bronte childer," she had little to show of her cleverness. Her education was as home-made as her gowns, not such as would give distinction to a governess; and a governess Emily would have to be. The Bronte sisters were too severe and noble in their theories of life ever to contemplate marriage as a means of livelihood; but even worldly sisters would have owned that there was little chance of impatient Emily marrying at all. She was almost violent in her dislike of strangers. The first time that Ellen stayed at Haworth, Charlotte was ill one day and could not go out with her friend. To their surprise Emily volunteered to take the stranger a walk over the moors. Charlotte waited anxiously for their return, fearing some outbreak of impatience or disdain on the part of her untamable sister. The two girls at last came home. "How did Emily behave?" asked Charlotte, eagerly, drawing her friend aside. She had behaved well; she had shown her true self, her noble, energetic, truthful soul, and from that day there was a real friendship between the gentle Ellen and the intractable Emily; but none the less does Charlotte's question reveal in how different a manner the girl regarded strangers as a rule. In after days when the curates, looking for Mr. Bronte in his study, occasionally found Emily there instead, they used to beat such a hasty retreat that it was quite an established joke at the Parsonage that Emily appeared to the outer world in the likeness of an old bear. She hated strange faces and strange places. Her sisters must have seen that such a temperament, if it made her unlikely to attract a husband or to wish to attract one, also rendered her lamentably unfit to earn her living as a governess. In those days they could not tell that the defect was incurable, a congenital infirmity of nature; and doubtless Charlotte, the wise elder sister, thought she had found a cure for both the narrow education and the narrow sympathies when she suggested that Emily should go to school. She writes to her friend in July, 1835:--
Charlotte knew where she was going. She loved and respected Miss Wooler; but with what anxiety must Emily have looked for the house where she was to live and not to be at home. At last she saw it, a cheerful, roomy, country house, standing a little apart in a field. There was a wide and pleasant view of fields and woods; but the green prospect was sullied and marred by the smoke from the frequent mills. Green fields, grey mills, all told of industry, labour, occupation. There was no wild stretch of moorland here, no possibility of solitude. I think when Emily Bronte saw the place, she must have known very well she would not be happy there. "My sister Emily loved the moors," says Charlotte, writing of these days in the latter solitude--"flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was liberty. Liberty was the breath of Emily's nostrils; without it she perished. The change from her own home to a school, and from her own very noiseless, very secluded, but unrestricted and unartificial mode of life to one of disciplined routine (though under the kindest auspices) was what she failed in enduring. Her nature was here too strong for her fortitude. Every morning, when she woke, the visions of home and the moors rushed on her, and darkened and saddened the day that lay before her. Nobody knew what ailed her but me. I knew only too well. In this struggle her health was quickly broken: her white face, attenuated form, and failing strength threatened rapid decline. I felt in my heart she would die if she did not go home." Thus looking on, Charlotte grew alarmed. She remembered the death of Maria and Elizabeth, and feared, feared with anguish, lest this best-beloved sister should follow them. She told Miss Wooler of her fear, and the schoolmistress, conscious of her own kindness and a little resentful at Emily's distress, consented that the girl should be sent home without delay. She did not care for Emily, and was not sorry to lose her. So in October she returned to Haworth, to the only place where she was happy and well. She returned to harder work and plainer living than she had known at school; but also to home, liberty, comprehension, her animals, and her flowers. In her native atmosphere she very soon recovered the health and strength that seemed so natural to her swift spirit; that were, alas, so easily endangered. She had only been at school three months. Even so short an absence may very grievously alter the aspect of familiar things. Haworth itself was the same; prim, tidy Miss Branwell still pattered about in her huge caps and tiny clogs; the Vicar still told his horrible stories at breakfast, still fought vain battles with the parishioners who would not drain the village, and the women who would dry their linen on the tombstones. Anne was still as transparently pretty, as pensive and pious as of old; but over the hope of the house, the dashing, clever Branwell, who was to make the name of Bronte famous in art, a dim, tarnishing change had come. Emily must have seen it with fresh eyes, left more and more in Branwell's company, when, after the Christmas holidays, Anne returned with Charlotte to Roe Head. There is in none of Charlotte's letters any further talk of sending Branwell to the Royal Academy. He earnestly desired to go, and for him, the only son, any sacrifice had willingly been made. But there were reasons why that brilliant unprincipled lad should not be trusted now, alone in London. Too frequent had been those visits to the "Black Bull," undertaken, at first, to amuse the travellers from London, Leeds and Manchester, who found their evenings dull. The Vicar's lad was following the proverbial fate of parsons' sons. Little as they foreboded the end in store, greatly as they hoped all his errors were a mere necessary attribute of manliness, the sisters must have read in his shaken nerves the dissipation for which their clever Branwell was already remarkable in Haworth. It is true that to be sometimes the worse for drink was no uncommon fault fifty years ago in Yorkshire; but the gradual coarsening of Branwell's nature, the growing flippancy, the altered health, must have given a cruel awakening to his sisters' dreams for his career. In 1836 this deterioration was at the beginning; a weed in bud that could only bear a bitter and poisonous fruit. Emily hoped the best; his father did not seem to see his danger; Miss Branwell spoiled the lad; and the village thought him a mighty pleasant young gentleman with a smile and a bow for every one, fond of a glass and a chat in the pleasant parlour of the "Black Bull" at nights; a gay, feckless, red-haired, smiling young fellow, full of ready courtesies to all his friends in the village; yet, none the less as full of thoughtless cruelties to his friends at home. For the rest, he had nothing to do, and was scarcely to blame if he could not devote sixteen hours a day to writing verses for the _Leeds Mercury_, his only ostensible occupation. It seems incredible that Mr. Bronte, who well understood the peculiar temptations to which his son lay open, could have suffered him to loaf about the village, doing nothing, month after month, lured into ill by no set purpose, but by a weak social temper and foolish friends. Yet so it was, and with such training, little hope of salvation could there be for that vain, somewhat clever, untruthful, fascinating boy. So things went on, drearily enough in reality, though perhaps more pleasantly in seeming--for Branwell, with his love of approbation and ready affectionateness, took all trouble consistent with self-indulgence to avoid the noise of his misdemeanours reaching home. Thus things went on till Charlotte returned from Miss Wooler's with little Anne in the midsummer holidays of 1836. An interval of happiness to lonely Emily; Charlotte's friend came to the grey cold-looking Parsonage, enlivening that sombre place with her gay youth and sweet looks. Home with four young girls in it was more attractive to Branwell than the alluring parlour of the "Black Bull." The harvest moon that year can have looked on no happier meeting. "It would not be right," says the survivor of those eager spirits, "to pass over one record which should be made of the sisters' lives together, after their school-days, and before they were broken in health by their efforts to support themselves, that at this time they had all a taste of happiness and enjoyment. They were beginning to feel conscious of their powers, they were rich in each other's companionship, their health was good, their spirits were high, there was often joyousness and mirth; they commented on what they read; analysed articles and their writers also; the perfection of unrestrained talk and intelligence brightened the close of the days which were passing all too swiftly. The evening march in the sitting-room, a constant habit learned at school, kept time with their thoughts and feelings, it was free and rapid; they marched in pairs, Emily and Anne, Charlotte and her friend, with arms twined round each other in child-like fashion, except when Charlotte, in an exuberance of spirit, would for a moment start away, make a graceful pirouette (though she had never learned to dance) and return to her march." So the evenings passed and the days, in happy fashion for a little while. Then Charlotte and Anne went back to Miss Wooler's, and Emily, too, took up the gauntlet against necessity. She was not of a character to let the distastefulness of any duty hinder her from undertaking it. She was very stern in her dealings with herself, though tender to the erring, and anxious to bear the burdens of the weak. She allowed no one but herself to decide what it behoved her to do. She could not see Charlotte labour, and not work herself. At home she worked, it is true, harder than servants; but she felt it right not only to work, but to earn. So, having recovered her natural strength, she left Haworth in September, and Charlotte writes from school to her friend: "My sister Emily has gone into a situation as teacher in a large school near Halifax. I have had one letter from her since her departure; it gives an appalling account of her duties; hard labour from six in the morning to eleven at night, with only one half-hour of exercise between. This is slavery. I fear she can never stand it." She stood it, however, all that term; came back to Haworth for a brief rest at Christmas, and again left it for the hated life she led, drudging among strangers. But when spring came back, with its feverish weakness, with its beauty and memories, to that stern place of exile, she failed. Her health broke down, shattered by long-resisted homesickness. Weary and mortified at heart, Emily again went back to seek life and happiness on the wild moors of Haworth. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 4: Mrs. Gaskell.] _ |
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