Charlotte Bronte and Ellen Nussey
Friendships are often born in the unlikeliest of places. How they endure the test of time is another matter entirely. For Charlotte Bronte and Ellen Nussey, their friendship lasted for over two decades, and they relied upon letters to cope with their distance from one another.
Charlotte Bronte, the future author of “Jane Eyre,” was not pleased to have leave her home in Haworth in Yorkshire and go to Roe Head School to be trained up as a teacher or a governess. Her previous experience at a school resulted in the deaths of her two older sisters. But now as the eldest of the remaining Bronte children, she had to pave the way for the others and become an educator, since marriage was no guarantee in life. There she met Ellen Nussey, her opposite in every way imaginable. Where Charlotte was intelligent and considered plain, Ellen was more of the traditional Victorian, beautiful and elegant. Yet the friendship was forged.
Ellen’s stay there wasn’t permanent while Charlotte remained at Roe Head for a few years. They paid visits to each other’s homes, but not nearly enough to satisfy them. Determined to stay in touch, she and Ellen corresponded religiously for the next twenty-four years. They exchanged their opinions on a variety of subjects: love, money, literature, marriage, religion…Unfortunately, Ellen’s side of the conversations was not preserved. Charlotte’s letters were preserved, accumulating to over five hundred letters. To Ellen, Charlotte was able to confide her deepest, darkest secrets. How she loathed teaching and being a governess, and longed to pursue a literary career. Through these hundreds of letters, the Bronte’s family story is told. What we know of the Bronte’s and how they lived is largely in thanks to Ellen Nussey, for saving her friends’ missives.
A daughter of an Irish curate, Charlotte and her siblings lived in a gothic-like parsonage on the edge of the moors. Her brother, Branwell, was to be the savior of the family and take care of his sisters and their aging father. Instead, he fell into dissipation and drugs. It was left to Charlotte, Emily, and Anne to raise the family’s hopes. After the three ventured out into the world and came home in 1845, beaten down by life, they banded together to produce a book of poetry. Later, they published novels as the Bell brothers, which provided them with a means of support. Eventually, what began as a secret endeavor, was undone when Charlotte and Anne had to travel to London to defend their reputations due to a shady publisher. They returned home happy, but darkness was on the horizon though.
The deaths of Branwell, Emily, and Anne left Charlotte bereft. She found solace in her friendship with Ellen, as well as her newfound fame as an author in literary society. The letters continued for the next few years, but there was a period when they came to an abrupt halt.
Her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls began to pursue Charlotte romantically, and after a rough beginning, she accepted his marriage proposal. When Ellen heard of the engagement, she was upset. She had believed that she and Charlotte would eventually live together as spinsters. This, coupled with her dislike of Arthur, temporarily upended her and Charlotte’s friendship. It took a year for them to reconcile and Ellen attended her dearest friend’s wedding. Yet the ungoverned freedom they had possessed in the previous years no longer existed. At first, Arthur read their letters. Only when Ellen agreed to destroy Charlotte’s missives, an attempt to protect her friend’s reputation as an author lest the letters fall into the wrong hands, did Arthur promise not to read their correspondence.
Ellen, however, did not keep her promise and cherished Charlotte’s letters.
Like her siblings, Charlotte did not have a strong constitution. It is believed she became pregnant and suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum – a severe case of mourning sickness – which led to her death in 1855.
Elizabeth Gaskell, fellow friend and author, was commissioned by Charlotte’s father to write a biography on his daughter. She went to Ellen Nussey and drew heavily upon the letters for her source material. “The Life of Charlotte Bronte,” was published two years later. Ellen died in 1897, at age 80, having spent the rest of her life devoted to Charlotte’s memory. She was often sought out by biographers for her input. After her death, her belongings and Charlotte’s letters were sold at auctions. The letters eventually found their way into the possession of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, where they remain today.
