And in another letter, written a little later (28th January 1858), Miss Mary Taylor writes to Miss Ellen Nussey in similar strain:—
‘Your account of Mrs. Gaskell’s book was very interesting,’ she says. ‘She seems a hasty, impulsive person, and the needful drawing back after her warmth gives her an inconsistent look. Yet I doubt not her book will be of great use. You must be aware that many strange notions as to the kind of person Charlotte really was will be done away with by a knowledge of the true facts of her life. I have heard imperfectly of farther printing on the subject. As to the mutilated edition that is to come, I am sorry for it. Libellous or not, the first edition was all true, and except the declamation all, in my opinion, useful to be published. Of course I don’t know how far necessity may make Mrs. Gaskell give them up. You know one dare not always say the world moves.’
We who do know the whole story in fullest detail will understand that it was desirable to ‘mutilate’ the book, and that, indeed, truth did in some measure require it. But with these letters of Mary Taylor’s before us, let us not hear again that the story of Charlotte Brontë’s life was not, in its main features, accurately and adequately told by her gifted biographer.
Why then, I am naturally asked, add one further book to the Brontë biographical literature? The reply is, I hope, sufficient. Forty years have gone by, and they have been years of growing interest in the subject. In the year 1895 ten thousand people visited the Brontë Museum at Haworth. Interesting books have been written, notably Sir Wemyss Reid’s Monograph and Mr. Leyland’s Brontë Family, but they have gone out of print. Many new facts have come to light, and many details, moreover, which were too trivial in 1857 are of sufficient importance to-day; and many facts which were rightly suppressed then may honestly and honourably be given to the public at an interval of nearly half a century. Added to all this, fortune has been kind to me.
Some three or four years ago Miss Ellen Nussey placed in my hands a printed volume of some 400 pages, which bore no publisher’s name, but contained upon its title-page the statement that it was The Story of Charlotte Brontë’s Life,
as told through her Letters. These are the Letters—370 in number—which Miss Nussey had lent to Mrs. Gaskell and to Sir Wemyss Reid. Of these letters Mrs. Gaskell published about 100, and Sir Wemyss Reid added as many more as he considered circumstances justified twenty years back.
It was explained to me that the volume had been privately printed under a misconception, and that only some dozen copies were extant. Miss Nussey asked me if I would write something around what might remain of the unpublished letters, and if I saw my way to do anything which would add to the public appreciation of the friend who from early childhood until now has been the most absorbing interest of her life. A careful study of the volume made it perfectly clear that there were still some letters which might with advantage be added to the Brontë story. At the same time arose the possibility of a veto being placed upon their publication. An examination of Charlotte Brontë’s will, which was proved at York by her husband in 1855, suggested an easy way out of the difficulty. I made up my mind to try and see Mr. Nicholls. I had heard of his disinclination to be in any way associated with the controversy which had gathered round his wife for all these years; but I wrote to him nevertheless, and received a cordial invitation to visit him in his Irish home.
It was exactly forty years to a day after Charlotte died—March 31st, 1895—when I alighted at the station in a quiet little town in the centre of Ireland, to receive the cordial handclasp of the man into whose keeping Charlotte Brontë had given her life. It was one of many visits, and the beginning of an interesting correspondence. Mr. Nicholls placed all the papers in his possession in my hands. They were more varied and more abundant than I could possibly have anticipated. They included MSS. of childhood, of which so much has been said, and stories of adult life, one fragment indeed being later than the Emma which
appeared in the Cornhill Magazine for 1856, with a note by Thackeray. Here were the letters Charlotte Brontë had written to her brother and to her sisters during her second sojourn in Brussels—to ‘Dear Branwell’ and ‘Dear E. J.,’ as she calls Emily—letters even to handle will give a thrill to the Brontë enthusiast. Here also were the love-letters of Maria Branwell to her lover Patrick Brontë, which are referred to in Mrs. Gaskell’s biography, but have never hitherto been printed.
‘The four small scraps of Emily and Anne’s manuscript,’ writes Mr. Nicholls, ‘I found in the small box I send you; the others I found in the bottom of a cupboard tied up in a newspaper, where they had lain for nearly thirty years, and where, had it not been for your visit, they must have remained during my lifetime, and most likely afterwards have been destroyed.’