Emily Brontë
and milk, and frequently himself inspected the supplies. But perhaps he
did not inspect the kitchen. The "Lowood" scholars had many tales to
tell of milk turned sour in dirty pans; of burnt porridge with
disgusting fragments in it from uncleanly cooking vessels; of rice
boiled in water from the rain-cask, flavoured with dead leaves, and the
dust of the roof; of beef salted when already tainted by decomposition;
of horrible resurrection-pies made of unappetising scraps and rancid
fat. The meat, flour, milk and rice were doubtless good enough when Mr.
Wilson saw them, but the starved little school-girls with their
disappointed hunger had neither the courage to complain nor the
impartiality to excuse. For the rest, it was not easy to complain to Mr.
Wilson. His sour evangelicism led him to the same conclusion as the
avarice of a less disinterested Yorkshire schoolmaster; he would have
bade them conquer human nature. Being a very proud man, he sought to
cultivate humility in others. The children were all dressed alike, all
wearing in summer plain straw cottage bonnets, white frocks on Sundays
and nankeen in the week; all wearing in winter purple stuff frocks and
purple pelisses--a serviceable and appropriate raiment which should
allow no envies, jealousies, or flatteries. They should not be vain,
neither should they be greedy. A request for nicer-tasting food would
have branded the asker with the lasting contempt of the Rev. William
Carus Wilson, trustee, treasurer, and secretary. They were to learn that
it was wrong to like pretty things to wear, nice things to eat, pleasant
games to play; these little scholars taken half on charity. Mr. Wilson
was repulsed by the apple-and-pegtop side of a child's nature; he
deliberately ignored it.
Once in this grim, cold, hungry house of charity, there was little hope
of escape. All letters and parcels were inspected by the superintendent;
no friends of the pupils were allowed in the school, except for a short
call of ceremony. But it is probable that Maria and Elizabeth, sent on
before, had no thought of warning their smaller sisters. So destitute of
all experience were they, that probably they imagined all schools like
Cowan's Bridge; so anxious to learn, that no doubt they willingly
accepted the cold, hunger, deliberate unkindness, which made their
childhood anxious and old.
The lot fell heaviest on the elder sister, clever, gentle, slovenly
Maria. The principal lesson taught at Cowan's Bridge was the value of
routine.
Maria, with her careless ways, ready opinions, gentle loving incapacity
to become a machine, Maria was at discord with every principle of
Cowan's Bridge. She incurred the bitter resentment of one of the
teachers, who sought all means of humiliating and mortifying the
sweet-natured, shiftless little creature. When, in September, bright,
talkative Charlotte and baby Emily came to Cowan's Bridge, they found
their idolised little mother, their Maria, the butt, laughingstock and
scapegrace of the school.
Things were better for the two younger ones, Charlotte, a bright clever
little girl, and Emily, the prettiest of the little sisters, "a darling
child, under five years of age, quite the pet nursling of the
school."[3] But though at first, no doubt, these two babies were pleased
by the change of scene and the companionship of children, trouble was to
befall them. Not the mere distasteful scantiness of their food, the mere
cold of their bodies; they saw their elder sister grow thinner, paler
day by day, no care taken of her, no indulgence made for her weakness.
The poor ill-used, ill-nourished child grew very ill without
complaining; but at last even the authorities at Cowan's Bridge
perceived that she was dying. They sent for Mr. Bronte in the spring of
1825. He had not heard of her illness in any of his children's letters,
duly inspected by the superintendent. He had heard no tales of poor
food, damp rooms, neglect. He came to Cowan's Bridge and saw Maria, his
clever little companion, thin, wasted, dying. The poor father felt a
terrible shock. He took her home with him, away from the three little
sisters who strained their eyes to look after her. She went home to
Haworth. A few days afterwards she died.
Not many weeks after Maria's death, when the spring made Lowood
bearable, when the three saddened little sisters no longer waked at
night for the cold, no longer lame with bleeding feet, could walk in the
sunshine and pick flowers, when April grew into May, an epidemic of
sickness came over Cowan's Bridge. The girls one by one grew weak and
heavy, neither scolding nor texts roused them now; instead of spending
their play-hours in games in the sweet spring air, instead of picking
flowers or running races, these growing children grew all languid,
flaccid, indolent. There was no stirring them to work or play.
Increasing illness among the girls made even their callous guardians
anxious at last. Elizabeth Bronte was one of the first to flag. It was
not the fever that ailed her, the mysterious undeclared fever that
brooded over the house; her frequent cough, brave spirits, clear colour
pointed to another goal. They sent her home in the care of a servant;
and before the summer flushed the scanty borders of flowers on the
newest graves in Haworth churchyard, Elizabeth Bronte was dead, no more
to hunger, freeze, or sorrow. Her hard life of ten years was over. The
second of the Bronte sisters had fallen a victim to consumption.
Discipline was suddenly relaxed for those remaining behind at Cowan's
Bridge. There was more to eat, for there were fewer mouths to feed;
there was more time to play and walk, for there were none to watch and
restrain the eager children, who played, eat, shouted, ran riot, with a
certain sense of relief, although they knew they were only free because
death was in the house and pestilence in the air.
The woody hollow of Cowan's Bridge was foggy, unwholesome, damp. The
scholars underfed, cramped, neglected. Their strange indolence and
heaviness grew stronger and stronger with the spring. All at once
forty-five out of the eighty girls lay sick of typhus-fever. Many were
sent home only to die, some died at Cowan's Bridge. All that could, sent
for their children home. Among the few who stayed in the fever-breeding
hollow, in the contaminated house, where the odours of pastilles and
drugs blended with, but could not conquer, the faint sickening smell of
fever and mortality, among these abandoned few were Charlotte and Emily
Bronte.
Thanks to the free, reckless life, the sunshine, the novel abundance of
food, the two children did not take the infection. Things, indeed, were
brighter for them now, or would have been, could the indignant spirit in
these tiny bodies have forgiven or forgotten the deaths of their two
sisters.
Reform had come to Cowan's Bridge, and with swift strides cleared away
the old order of things. The site was declared unhealthy; the clothing
insufficient; the water fetid and brackish. When the doctor who
inspected the school was asked to taste the daily food of the scholars
he spat it out of his mouth. Everything, everything must be altered. It
was a time of sore and grievous humiliation to Mr. Wilson. He had felt
no qualms, no doubts; he had worked very hard, he thought things were
going very well. The accounts were in excellent order, the education
thorough and good, the system elaborate, the girls really seemed to be
acquiring a meek and quiet spirit; and, to quote the prospectus, "the
great object in view is their intellectual and religious improvement."
Then stepped in unreckoned-with disease, and the model institution
became a by-word of reproach to the county and the order to which it
belonged. People, however, were not unjust to the influential and
wealthy treasurer, trustee, and secretary. They admitted his energy,
financial capacities, and turn for organisation. All they did was to
qualify the rigour of his management. He still continued treasurer, but
the funds were entrusted to a committee. He kept his post of inspector,
but assistants were appointed to share his responsibilities. The school
was given in charge to a new housekeeper; larger and better rations of
food were given out. Finally a subscription was set on foot to build a
better house in a healthier spot. When Charlotte and Emily Bronte went
home for the midsummer holidays, reform was in full swing at Cowan's
Bridge.
They went home, two out of the four children who had left their happy
home six months before. They went home to find no motherly Maria, no
sturdy, patient Elizabeth. The walks on the moors, the tales under the
thorn-trees must henceforth be incomplete. The two elders of that little
band were no longer to be found in house or garden--they lay quiet under
a large paving-stone close to the vicarage pew at church. The three
little sisters, the one little brother, must have often thought on their
quiet neighbours when the sermon was very long. Thus early familiarised
and neighbourly with death, one of them at least, tall, courageous
Emily, grew up to have no dreary thoughts of it, neither any dreams of
a far-off heaven.
When the holidays were over, the two sisters returned to school. Their
father, strangely enough, had no fear to send them to that fatal place.
Their aunt, with her two favourites at home, was not over-anxious.
Charlotte and Emily went back to Cowan's Bridge. But before the winter
they were ill: the damp air, the unhealthy site (for as yet the new
house was not built) brought out the weakness of their constitutions.
Bearing the elder sisters' fate in view, the authorities warned Mr.
Bronte, and the two children came home to Haworth.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: It is very much wished that the pupils should wear only
their school dress during the vacations.]
[Footnote 3: Mrs. Harben to Mrs. Gaskell.]
CHAPTER IV.
CHILDHOOD.
The home to which Charlotte and Emily returned was not a very much more
healthy spot than that they left; but it was home. It was windy and
cold, and badly drained. Mr. Bronte was ever striving to stir up his
parishioners to improve the sanitary conditions of the place; but for
many years his efforts were in vain. The canny Yorkshire folk were loth
to put their money underground, and it was hard to make them believe
that the real cause of the frequent epidemics and fevers in Haworth was
such as could be cured by an effective system of subsoil drainage. It
was cheaper and easier to lay the blame at the doors of Providence. So
the parson preached in vain. Well might he preach, for his own house was
in the thick of the evil.
"As you left the Parsonage-gate you looked upon the stonecutter's
chipping-shed, which was piled with slabs ready for use, and to the ear
there was the incessant 'chip, chip' of the recording chisel as it
graved in the 'In Memoriams' of the departed."
So runs Miss Nussey's manuscript. She also tells of the constant sound
of the passing bell; of the frequent burials in the thronged churchyard.
No cheerful, healthy home for sensitive, delicate children.
"From the Parsonage windows the first view was the plot of grass edged
by a wall, a thorn-tree or two, and a few shrubs and currant-bushes that
did not grow. Next to these was the large and half-surrounding
churchyard, so full of gravestones that hardly a strip of grass could be
seen in it."
Beyond this the moors, the wild, barren, treeless moors, that stretch
away for miles and miles, feeding a few herds of mountain sheep,
harbouring some wild conies and hares, giving a nesting-place to the
birds of heaven, and, for the use of man, neither grain nor pasturage,
but quarries of stone and piles of peat luridly smouldering up there on
autumn nights.