CHAPTER VIII: ELLEN NUSSEY
If to be known by one’s friends is the index to character that it is frequently assumed to be, Charlotte Brontë comes well out of that ordeal. She was discriminating in friendship and leal to the heart’s core. With what gratitude she thought of the publisher who gave her the ‘first chance’ we know by recognising that the manly Dr. John of Villette was Mr. George Smith of Smith & Elder. Mr. W. S. Williams, again, would seem to have been a singularly gifted and amiable man. To her three girl friends, Ellen Nussey, Mary Taylor, and Lætitia Wheelwright, she was loyal to her dying day, and pencilled letters to the two of them who were in England were written in her last illness. Of all her friends, Ellen Nussey must always have the foremost place in our esteem. Like Mary Taylor, she made Charlotte’s acquaintance when, at fifteen years of age, she first went to Roe Head School. Mrs. Gaskell has sufficiently described the beginnings of that friendship which death was not to break. Ellen Nussey and Charlotte Brontë corresponded with a regularity which one imagines would be impossible had they both been born half a century later. The two girls loved one another profoundly. They wrote at times almost daily. They quarrelled occasionally over trifles, as friends will, but Charlotte was always full of contrition when a few hours had passed. Towards the end of her life she wrote to Mr. Williams a letter concerning Miss Nussey which may well be printed here.
‘January 3rd, 1850.
‘My dear Sir,—I have to acknowledge the receipt of the Morning Chronicle with a good review, and of the Church of England Quarterly and the Westminster with bad ones. I have also to thank you for your letter, which would have been answered sooner had I been alone; but just now I am enjoying the treat of my friend Ellen’s society, and she makes me indolent and negligent—I am too busy talking to her all day to do anything else. You allude to the subject of female friendships, and express wonder at the infrequency of sincere attachments amongst women. As to married women, I can well understand that they should be absorbed in their husbands and children—but single women often like each other much, and derive great solace from their mutual regard. Friendship, however, is a plant which cannot be forced. True friendship is no gourd, springing in a night and withering in a day. When I first saw Ellen I did not care for her; we were school-fellows. In course of time we learnt each other’s faults and good points. We were contrasts—still, we suited. Affection was first a germ, then a sapling, then a strong tree—now, no new friend, however lofty or profound in intellect—not even Miss Martineau herself—could be to me what Ellen is; yet she is no more than a conscientious, observant, calm, well-bred Yorkshire girl. She is without romance. If she attempts to read poetry, or poetic prose, aloud, I am irritated and deprive her of the book—if she talks of it, I stop my ears; but she is good; she is true; she is faithful, and I love her.
‘Since I came home, Miss Martineau has written me a long and truly kindly letter. She invites me to visit her at Ambleside. I like the idea. Whether I can realise it or not, it is pleasant to have in prospect.
‘You ask me to write to Mrs. Williams. I would rather she wrote to me first; and let her send any kind of letter she likes, without studying mood or manner.—Yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
Good, True, Faithful—friendship has no sweeter words than these; and it was this loyalty in Miss Nussey which has marked her out in our day as a fine type of sweet womanliness, and will secure to her a lasting name as the friend of Charlotte Brontë.
Miss Ellen Nussey was one of a large family of children, all of whom she survives. Her home during the years of her first friendship with Charlotte Brontë was at the Rydings, at that time the property of an uncle, Reuben Walker, a distinguished court physician. The family in that generation and in this has given many of its members to high public service in various professions. Two Nusseys, indeed, and two Walkers, were court physicians in their day. When Earl Fitzwilliam was canvassing for the county in 1809, he was a guest at the Rydings for two weeks, and on his election was chaired by the tenantry. Reuben Walker, this uncle of Miss Nussey’s, was the only Justice of the Peace for the district which included Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, and Halifax, during the Luddite riots—a significant reminder of the growth of population since that day. Ellen Nussey’s home was at the Rydings, then tenanted by her brother John, until 1837, and she then removed to Brookroyd, where she lived until long after Charlotte Brontë died.
The first letter to Ellen Nussey is dated May 31, 1831, Charlotte having become her school-fellow in the previous January. It would seem to have been a mere play exercise across the school-room, as the girls were then together at Roe Head.
‘Dear Miss Nussey,—I take advantage of the earliest opportunity to thank you for the letter you favoured me with last week, and to apologise for having so long neglected to write to you; indeed, I believe this will be the first letter or note I have ever addressed to you. I am extremely obliged to Mary for her kind invitation, and I assure you that I should very much have liked to hear the Lectures on Galvanism, as they would doubtless have been amusing and instructive. But we are often compelled to bend our inclination to our duty (as Miss Wooler observed the other day), and since there are so many holidays this half-year, it would have appeared almost unreasonable to ask for an extra holiday; besides, we should perhaps have got behindhand with our lessons, so that, everything considered, it is perhaps as well that circumstances have deprived us of this pleasure.—Believe me to remain, your affectionate friend,
‘C. Brontë.’
But by the Christmas holidays, ‘Dear Miss Nussey’ has become ‘Dear Ellen,’ and the friendship has already well commenced.
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Haworth, January 13th, 1832.
‘Dear Ellen,—The receipt of your letter gave me an agreeable surprise, for notwithstanding your faithful promises, you must excuse me if I say that I had little confidence in their fulfilment, knowing that when school girls once get home they willingly abandon every recollection which tends to remind them of school, and indeed they find such an infinite variety of circumstances to engage their attention and employ their leisure hours, that they are easily persuaded that they have no time to fulfil promises made at school. It gave me great pleasure, however, to find that you and Miss Taylor are exceptions to the general rule. The cholera still seems slowly advancing, but let us yet hope, knowing that all things are under the guidance of a merciful Providence. England has hitherto been highly favoured, for the disease has neither raged with the astounding violence, nor extended itself with the frightful rapidity which marked its progress in many of the continental countries.—From your affectionate friend,
‘Charlotte Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Haworth, January 1st, 1833.
‘Dear Ellen,—I believe we agreed to correspond once a month. That space of time has now elapsed since I received your last interesting letter, and I now therefore hasten to reply. Accept my congratulations on the arrival of the New Year, every succeeding day of which will, I trust, find you wiser and better in the true sense of those much-used words. The first day of January always presents to my mind a train of very solemn and important reflections, and a question more easily asked than answered frequently occurs, viz.—How have I improved the past year, and with what good intentions do I view the dawn of its successor? These, my dearest Ellen, are weighty considerations which (young as we are) neither you nor I can too deeply or too seriously ponder. I am sorry your too great diffidence, arising, I think, from the want of sufficient confidence in your own capabilities, prevented you from writing to me in French, as I think the attempt would have materially contributed to your improvement in that language. You very kindly caution me against being tempted by the fondness of my sisters to consider myself of too much importance, and then in a parenthesis you beg me not to be offended. O Ellen, do you think I could be offended by any good advice you may give me? No, I thank you heartily, and love you, if possible, better for it. I am glad you like Kenilworth. It is certainly a splendid production, more resembling a romance than a novel, and, in my opinion, one of the most interesting works that ever emanated from the great Sir Walter’s pen. I was exceedingly amused at the characteristic and naive manner in which you expressed your detestation of Varney’s character—so much so, indeed, that I could not forbear laughing aloud when I perused that part of your letter. He is certainly the personification of consummate villainy; and in the delineation of his dark and profoundly artful mind, Scott exhibits a wonderful knowledge of human nature as well as surprising skill in embodying his perceptions so as to enable others to become participators in that knowledge. Excuse the want of news in this very barren epistle, for I really have none to communicate. Emily and Anne beg to be kindly remembered to you. Give my best love to your mother and sisters, and as it is very late permit me to conclude with the assurance of my unchanged, unchanging, and unchangeable affection for you.—Adieu, my sweetest Ellen, I am ever yours,
‘Charlotte.’