We are in the midst of another heatwave here in Yorkshire, but in 1848 it was this week which changed literary history forever – for better and worse. This was the week in which Charlotte and Anne Brontë travelled to London together to finally reveal their true identities and, in doing so, disprove theories that Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell were one person acting dishonestly. They arrived at Euston (that’s it at the head of this page) in the early hours of 8th July. It was on 11th July 1848 that they returned to Haworth, and in today’s new Brontë blog post we are going to look at what they brought back with them.
During their four day stay in the capital (which was to be Anne Brontë’s only journey outside of Yorkshire) Charlotte and Anne were shown the sites of London by publisher George Smith and W. S. Williams. It was a joyous but very tiring time, and when it was time for the sisters to return to Haworth they were given parcels of books to take with them – a welcome and valuable gift, as books at this time were an expensive commodity. Two days after arriving home, Charlotte wrote to Smith to thank him:
“My dear sir, I am not going to write an elaborate note of thanks, for the fact is, you have left me little to say on that head. I feel it is unavailing to multiply words, however benefits may be multiplied. We received the parcel, which was indeed a treasure to bring home with us.”
A month and a half later, however, Charlotte did elaborate in a lengthy account of the trip to London which she gave in a letter to her friend Mary Taylor, then resident in New Zealand. Charlotte’s letter of 4th September ends:
“On Tuesday morning we left London – laden with books Mr. Smith had given us – and got safely home. A more jaded wretch than I looked when I returned, it would be difficult to conceive – I was thin when I went but was meagre indeed when I returned, my face looked grey and very old – with strange deep lines ploughed in it. My eyes stared unnaturally – I was weak and yet restless.”
Twenty days after writing this letter, Charlotte’s brother Branwell Brontë was dead. He was an alcoholic and a heavy drug user who had been unwell for some time, but these weren’t the cause of his death. The death certificate records chronic marasmus – a wasting associated with consumption, what we know now as tuberculosis. Within a year of the visit to London, Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë had all died of tuberculosis. Only Charlotte Brontë was left of the Brontë siblings.
Haworth was a sickly, infested village with death rates as high as the worst slums of London and where the Babbage report showed that over four in ten people died before the age of six, but by far the biggest killers were typhus and cholera. Tuberculosis was an infection carried from person to person, a killer of the crowded cities, and relatively rare in Haworth – so it is more than an anomaly that five of the six Brontë children should die of it.
The tragic reality is that tuberculosis was and is a disease of the big cities and crowded conditions. That week in July 1848 not only changed the course of literature forever, it also led directly to the death of Branwell Brontë and then to the deaths of Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë, like dominoes falling long after the first domino had been pushed.
In 1972, eminent doctor Professor Philip Rhodes published a fascinating and detailed study called “A Medical Appraisal Of The Brontës” in which he gave the following assessment:
“She [Emily] might have collected an overwhelming dose of tubercle bacilli from Branwell. She seems to have been the practical one about the household and may well have been Branwell’s nurse and so liable to massive infection… It is of especial interest that Charlotte and Anne made a hurried journey to London in July, 1848… Could one or other of the sisters have picked up a further dose of tubercle bacilli which when they returned to Haworth they handed on to Branwell and to Emily? This seems a most likely supposition. Almost certainly one or other of them introduced a new pathogenic element into the closed community of Haworth Parsonage, which wreaked so much havoc so quickly… Anne perhaps was the most amiable and affable of all the Brontës, but it seems likely that it was the exposure to the pathogens of the big city that killed her, and it is probable that it was she who brought home the infection which killed Branwell and Emily before her.”
I have to agree that it seems likely that Charlotte or Anne brought the deadly infection back to Haworth Parsonage with them. It matters not which sister did it unintentionally and unknowingly, but it appears to me that evidence may indicate that it was Charlotte. Look at the description Charlotte gives of herself after her return from London to Mary Taylor. She is tired, she is restless, she has lines on her face and looks old, she is in a wretched state. All of these are common early symptoms of tuberculosis. Perhaps it is possible that Charlotte picked up a tubercular pathogen in the crowded environment of London, but she may already have built up some immunity to the disease through contact with it at Cowan Bridge School, the school that saw her sisters Maria and Elizabeth Brontë, and many others, succumb to the disease. If this is the case then Charlotte’s immunity protected her, but her siblings did not have the same protection.
It seems certain to me that tuberculosis as well as books were carried back from London to Haworth, and there is only one real culprit: Thomas Cautley Newby, the unscrupulous publisher whose lies had caused Charlotte and Anne to head to London with wicked speed to protect their name. Without that, the Brontë story could have been very different. I hope you can join me next Sunday for another new Brontë blog post.