Mr. Nicolls in love with Charlotte Bronte

13-12-1852      Mr. Nicolls proposed marriage to Charlotte
05-01-1853      Charlotte set out for London. Correcting the proofs for Vilette.
     02-1853      Back in Haworth

 

The Bishop of Ripon, Reverend  Dr. Charles Longley paid a visit. 
Charlotte:"" Mr. N. demeaned himself not quite pleasantly.  I thought he made no effort to struggle with his dejection but gave way to it in a manner to draw notice; the Bishop was obviously puzzled by it.  Mr. Nicholls also showed temper once or twice in speaking to papa.  Martha was beginning to tell me of certain “flaysome” looks also, but I desired not to hear of them:""wiki/Charles_Longley

      04-1853     Charlotte visits Mrs. Gaskell in Manchester.

15-05-1853      Last communion service Mr. Nicolls.

"Having ventured on Whit Sunday to stop the sacrament, I got a lesson not to be repeated.  He struggled, faltered, then lost command over himself—stood before my eyes and in the sight of all the communicants white, shaking, voiceless. Joseph Redman spoke some words to him.  He made a great effort, but could only with difficulty whisper and falter through the service.  I suppose he thought this would be the last time; he goes either this week or the next.  I heard the women sobbing round, and I could not quite check my own tears".

      08-1853     Mr Nicolls is writing to Charlotte that he will become the the curate of Kirk Smeaton. After let many letters unanswered Charlotte writes back. By the autumn they were in regular
correspondence.

     09-1853     Mr Gaskell is visiting Haworth. Elizabeth Gaskell asks Richard Monckton Milnes to give Mr. Nicolls a pension. Richard_Monckton_Milnes

During the troubled period when Patrick was opposing his daughter’s connection with Arthur Bell Nicholls he met him (his family seat was close to Kirk Smeaton, whither Nicholls had “exiled” himself) and dangled in front of him two chances of possible Church preferment, which Nicholls refused. At Mrs Gaskell’s instigation he attempted to get him a pension, but he was – unusually for him – unsuccessful. blackwellreference


21-11-1853 Charlotte receives a letter from Mrs. Smith about the wedding plans of George Smith.This may have helped finally to pave the way for mr. Nicolls. She braved her father's wrath  and demanded to be allowed the meeting for which Mr. Nicolls had asked.the meeting.

• George Smith was unmarried, and, though eight years younger than Charlotte, she was clearly attracted to him, writing to her friend Ellen Nussey in January 1851:

‘Were there no vast barrier of age, fortune etc. there is perhaps enough personal regard to make things possible which are now impossible. If men and women married because they like each others’ temper, look, conversation, nature and so on – and if besides, years were more closely equal – the chance you allude to might be admitted as a chance – but other reasons regulate matrimony – reasons of convenience, of connection, of money. Meantime I am content to have him as a friend – and pray to God to continue to me the commonsense to look on one so young, so rising and so hopeful in no other light...’

• Many years after Charlotte’s death the author Mrs Humphry Ward asked Smith directly whether he had ever been in love with Charlotte. He replied:

‘No, I was never in the least bit in love with Charlotte Brontë... The truth is I never could have loved any woman who had not some charm or grace of person, and Charlotte Brontë had none. I liked her and was interested by her, and I admired her – especially when she was in Yorkshire and I was in London. I never was coxcomb enough to suppose that she was in love with me. But I believe that my mother was at one time rather alarmed.’

• Smith’s mother had no cause for alarm, however. In February 1854 he married the pretty, very sociable, eminently suitable Elizabeth Blakeway. Four months later Charlotte herself was married to Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate. george-smith 

    

01-1854 Mr. Nicolls came to stay for 10 days with his friend  Mr Sowden at Oxenhope. Here in the bitterly cold weather  Charlotte and Mr. Nicolls met and walked. Charlotte had the opportunaty to become better acquainted.   the-blue-snow-of-new-england

Elizabeth Gaskell  wrote that Charlotte told her father

Father, I am not a young girl, nor a young woman, even--I never was pretty. I now am ugly. At your death I will have £300 besides the little I have earned myself--do you think there are many men who would serve seven years for me?... Yes, I must marry a curate if I marry at all; not merely a curate but your curate; not merely your curate but he must live in the house with you, for I cannot leave you.

In a letter to Miss Wooler, a friend, she wrote of her engagement:
"I must tell you then, that since I wrote last, papa's mind has gradually come round to a view very different to that which he once took; and that after some correspondence, and as the result of a visit Mr. Nicholls paid here about a week ago, it was agreed that he was to resume the curacy of Haworth, as soon as papa's present assistant is provided with a situation, and in due course of time he is to be received as an inmate into this house.

24-02-1854   The situation had caused a cooling in the friendship on Nussey's part, who was probably jealous of Brontë's attachment to Nicholls, having thought they would both live as spinsters.
Answer of  MARY TAYLOR to ELLEN NUSSEY on a letter Ellen waswriting.

""You talk wonderful nonsense abt C. Bronte in yr letter. What do you mean about "bearing her position so long, & enduring to the end"? & still better -- "bearing our lot whatever it is". If it's C's lot to be married shd n't she bear that too? Or does your strange morality mean that she shd refuse to ameliorate her lot when it lies in her power. how wd. she be inconsistent with herself in marrying? Because she considers her own pleasure? If this is so new for her to do, it is high time she began to make it more common. It is an outrageous exaction to expect her to give up her choice in a manner so important, & I think her to blame in having been hitherto so yielding that her friends can think of making such an impudent demand"".

11-04-1854 Charlotte announced her engagement in a letter to Ellen Nussey

18-04-1854   Charlotte Bronte made up a marriage settlement in anticipation of her marriage to Arthur Bell Nicholls. Charlotte.s marriage settlement was unusual because most marriage settlements stated that if the wife predeceased the husband and was childless, only then would the money revert to the husband. In Charlotte Brontë.s case, the intention of the marriage settlement was to exclude Arthur Bell Nicholls altogether, because if Charlotte died childless, the money would go to her father, Patrick Brontë. As it turned out, Charlotte later revoked this marriage settlement before her death by

changing her will, and leaving everything to her husband.

22-05-1854   Before her marriage in 1854 Charlotte converted the room into a study for her future husband, the Revd. Arthur Bell Nicholls, who in 1845 had come to assist her father as curate at Haworth Church. A fireplace was added to the room and the present doorway created into the entrance hall.

Describing her preparations for the room's conversion in a letter dated 22 May 1854, Charlotte wrote: '...I have been very busy stitching - the little new room is got into order now and the green and white curtains are up - they exactly suit the papering and look neat and clean enough.' Three wallpaper samples were found in Charlotte's writing desk. A fourth sample, held in the New York Public Library, is accompanied by a note, authenticated by Elizabeth Gaskell, which describes it as being a 'Slip of the paper with which Charlotte Brontë papered her future husband's study, before they were married'. bronte-parsonage

08-05-1854           CATHERINE WINKWORTH to EMMA SHAEN,

If only he is not altogether far too narrow for her, one can fancy her much more really happy with such a man than with one who might have made her more in love, and I am sure she will be really good to him. But I guess the true love was Paul Emanuel [Charlotte's character in VILLETTE based off M. Heger] after all, and is dead; but I don't know, and don't think that Lily [Mrs. Gaskell] knows...

29-06-1854 The marriage took place at Haworth.

Henceforward the sacred doors of home are closed upon her married life. We, her loving friends, standing outside, caught occasional glimpses of brightness, and pleasant peaceful murmurs of sound, telling of the gladness within; and we looked at each other, and gently said, "After a hard and long struggle - after many cares and many bitter sorrows - she is tasting happiness now!" We thought of the slight astringencies of her character, and how they would turn to full ripe sweetness in that calm sunshine of domestic peace. We remembered her trials, and were glad in the idea that God had seen fit to wipe away the tears from her eyes. Those who saw her, saw an outward change in her look, telling of inward things. And we thought, and we hoped, and we prophesied, in our great love and reverence. life-of-charlotte-bronte-elizabeth.html