Charlotte was
dumbfounded when she was proposed to by Mr Nicholls. She didn’t love him, and felt that they had
nothing in common. However, her father
really lost his temper when he heard of the proposal. His motives were mixed. He was afraid of
losing his daughter; he was an old man and wanted her to be with him and look
after him. He also believed that she was
too delicate to endure childbirth and that marriage would be dangerous for
her. And he didn’t like Mr Nicholls much
either. He believed that as a well-known
novelist, Charlotte could do better, in finding a husband and that probably Mr
Nicholls was boasting about his own family background in Ireland. The man had nothing but a modest income as a
curate…how could he keep a wife?
He got into such a
rage that Charlotte hastily denied all desire to marry Nicholls and after a few
arguments, the younger man left Haworth and his job. The local people by now knew of Charlotte’s being
a novelist; they all liked her and thought that this man wasn’t nearly good
enough. He was considered very presumptuous, to have addressed a marriage offer
to their “Miss Bronte”.
Charlotte felt that
she should obey her father, even though she was now a mature woman. But she was having second thoughts. Mr Nicholls was not, in her opinion, very
clever. He was dull, shy and awkward,
and she didn’t find him attractive. But
she was aware that she was getting older and did not have many chances of
marriage. She realised that he genuinely loved her for herself, and if he
wasn’t very interested in her writing, that was in its way a point in his
favour.
Mrs Gaskell was
staying with her, when this row over Mr Nichols was going on, and being happily
wed herself, she felt that Charlotte too should have a chance of marriage. She could see how lonely her friend was, and
wanted to help. She encouraged Charlotte
to engage in correspondence with her admirer and to seriously consider his
offer. Charlotte had rarely disobeyed her father, but she was beginning to
develop some interest in the curate…As a girl, she would have refused to marry
without love, but now, she was willing to be glad that he cared deeply for
her. Luckily for her, Mr Bronte disliked
the new curate he had found and was beginning to soften. Old Tabby, the family servant, told him that
he should let her get married. The local
townsfolk began to miss Nicholls as well. Charlotte pleaded with her father, telling him
that not many men would want to marry her... She insisted that if she was
married to Nicholls, he was willing to live in their home and help to take care
of his father in law and take the burden of church work off him.
Grudgingly, Patrick
gave in, but he refused to give his daughter away at the quiet wedding.
Charlotte was very nervous of marriage, knowing that she and Arthur did not
have much in common other than their church background. He wasn’t “intellectual”. But the marriage was quite a success. They went to Ireland for their honeymoon and
she found that Mr Nicholls’ family were “well bred” and comfortably off,
grander than her own father’s background! She grew into a gentle love for him,
being very happy at last to have a companion who wanted to be with her….
When back in
Haworth, she referred to him affectionately in her letters as “My dear Arthur”
and “my dear boy.” She helped more with his parish work and her father was able
to relax and to feel the benefits of having a son in law living in. The only fly in the ointment was Charlottes
writing. She told Nicholls that if she
hadn’t been spending the evening with him she would have been writing, and
showed him a story she had begun, which was later published as “Emma”, - the
few pages she had written. Marriage was
taking up a lot of her time, and she had less to bestow on her work. It was set
in a school and Arthur told her he feared the critics would think she was
repeating her Jane Eyre and Villette themes.
She told him she would probably re write it several times till she got
it the way she wanted. But she never
completed the novel.
She was busy, she
was happy in a way she had never been; even if her husband was not an
intellectual companion…She also became pregnant… Unluckily, she caught a bad
cold, out walking with Arthur, and became very ill. It’s not clear what was wrong… The chill may
have weakened her and she may have also fallen victim to the family curse of
TB, but she was almost vomiting persistently, and it seems as if this was
related to pregnancy. Her illness went
on, exhausting her, and she died a mere 9 months after her marriage.
She was clearly in
love with her husband and happy in the marriage and he was devoted to her. After her death, he showed himself a decent and loyal man; he kept his promise to
her, to look after her father. He
remained with old Mr Bronte for several years, till he died. The 2 men weren’t that close. Patrick found some comfort after his last child’s
death, in delighting in her literary fame. He wanted a
biography written, whereas Mr Nicholls felt that it would be an intrusion on
Charlotte’s privacy and his, and that he did not want such publicity for the
woman he loved. He hated the “autograph
hunters” who were beginning to invade Haworth and even more, he hated journalists
who wrote about his wife…
He and Mr Bronte argued
about the issue of her literary works and having a biography written. Mr bronte felt it would be good to have an authorised biography to counter the more wild and silly stories that had appeared. In the end it was written by Charlotte’s
good friend Elizabeth Gaskell and Patrick was not best pleased with it. She portrayed him as extremely eccentric, and
rather selfish. He noted several inaccuracies. There was controversy about what she wrote about
the Bronte children and their school, where the 2 girls died. Lawsuits were threatened about her chapter
about Branwell’s affair with Mrs Robinson. Mr Nicholls may have felt he was justified in his dislike of the whole project. But it was a well written biography
which was the foundation for other works on Charlotte’s and the Brontes’ lives.
Eventually after Mr
Bronte’s death, Nicholls went back to Ireland since he was not offered the
clerical post in Haworth, and he gave up Orders and became a gentleman
farmer. He remarried, but seems to have always
loved Charlotte. So in her way, she had her great romance…
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