Welcome to another new Brontë blog post! I hope you all had a Happy Easter last week; this is a time for joy and celebration, a time to look forward to warmer and cheerier days ahead, so it’s fitting that this week’s post, and indeed today, marks a joyous anniversary in the Brontë story.
Arthur Bell Nicholls, after long admiring Charlotte Brontë during his service as her father’s assistant curate, first proposed to Charlotte in December 1852. She gave a memorable recreation of this proposal in a letter sent to her friend Ellen Nussey:
Arthur was rejected by Charlotte, and her father Patrick was furious at the audacity of an assistant curate to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. It was a devastating blow for Arthur, who gave notice at the parish and applied for a job as a missionary in Australia. Charlotte recalled how Arthur, in his last service, was unable to speak and had to be led out of the pulpit shaking – she later found him sobbing uncontrollably by the garden gate.
Fate intervened. Arthur was unable to secure a position in Australia, and instead became assistant curate in Kirk Smeaton, a parish just 40 miles from Haworth (that’s Kirk Smeaton’s St. Peter’s church at the head of this post). From there Arthur began a correspondence with Charlotte, and her attitude towards him began to change. It’s worth noting at this point that Arthur Bell Nicholls was well liked and highly regarded by the Haworth parishioners; one of them, a James Robinson whom Arthur trained to be a teacher, gave him this glowing tribute many years later:
“I never saw a man feel more than he did… no kinder-hearted man or one more anxious to see others improve their position in life, ever lived, and I myself – I might say scores besides – have him to thank for putting us in the way to make a way in life instead of remaining where we had been born.”
On 11th April 1854 Arthur returned to Haworth and proposed to Charlotte once more, this time with a very different result. We get Charlotte’s report of this event in a letter to Margaret Wooler sent on this day, 12th April, 1854:
It’s a great tragedy that Charlotte and Arthur had just over a year together at this point, but I also think it’s a great blessing that Charlotte found real happiness and love at the end of her life. Love and a happy marriage are, after all, in my opinion, the greatest blessings we can find on this earth.
I propose that we share another new Brontë blog post next Sunday, same time, same place, and I hope you can join me then.