The Rev. A. B. Nicholls, curate of Haworth since 1845, proposed marriage to Charlotte in 1852.

In 1826 Arthur Bell Nicholls was taken in by his uncle the Reverend Allan Bell, headmaster of the Royal Free School, Banagher, and 10years later went up to Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 1844. His first clerical position was the curacy at Haworth, and he took up his duties in May 1845...

Mr Brontë was by then 68 years old, and besides taking services and undertaking such duties as Mr Brontë might direct, Mr Nicholls had specific responsibilities for Stanbury village, and for the Church School, where he taught five mornings a week. He was diligent, serious-minded and widely read, and both Mr Brontë and the village thought well of him. A strongly built man, he liked fresh air and exercise, and would take the Brontë dogs for walks on the moors.
Mr Nicholls lived in the sexton John Brown's house adjoining the Church School. A few months after Mr Nicholls' arrival in Haworth, Branwell returned home in disgrace, and Mr Nicholls would have witnessed every stage of Branwell's decline over the next three years, and shared the tragedy of the deaths of Branwell, Emily and Anne in 1848-9. By 1850 he would have been more familiar than anyone with the family at the Parsonage.

His proposal of marriage to Charlotte in December 1852 came as a complete surprise to both her and her father. Angered by his curate's presumption, Mr Brontë withheld his consent and Charlotte declined the offer.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘December 15th, 1852.

On Monday evening Mr. Nicholls was here to tea.  I vaguely felt without clearly seeing, as without seeing I have felt for some time, the meaning of his constant looks, and strange, feverish restraint.  After tea I withdrew to the dining-room as usual.  As usual, Mr. Nicholls sat with papa till between eight and nine o’clock; I then heard him open the parlour door as if going.  I expected the clash of the front door.  He stopped in the passage; he p. 473tapped; like lightning it flashed on me what was coming.  He entered; he stood before me.  What his words were you can guess; his manner you can hardly realise, nor can I forget it.  Shaking from head to foot, looking deadly pale, speaking low, vehemently, yet with difficulty, he made me for the first time feel what it costs a man to declare affection where he doubts response.
‘The spectacle of one ordinarily so statue-like thus trembling, stirred, and overcome, gave me a kind of strange shock.  He spoke of sufferings he had borne for months, of sufferings he could endure no longer, and craved leave for some hope.  I could only entreat him to leave me then and promise a reply on the morrow.  I asked him if he had spoken to papa.  He said he dared not.  I think I half led, half put him out of the room.  When he was gone I immediately went to papa, and told him what had taken place.  Agitation and anger disproportionate to the occasion ensued; if I had loved Mr. Nicholls, and had heard such epithets applied to him as were used, it would have transported me past my patience; as it was, my blood boiled with a sense of injustice.  But papa worked himself into a state not to be trifled with: the veins on his temples started up like whip-cord, and his eyes became suddenly bloodshot.  I made haste to promise that Mr. Nicholls should on the morrow have a distinct refusal.
‘I wrote yesterday and got this note.  There is no need to add to this statement any comment.  Papa’s vehement antipathy to the bare thought of any one thinking of me as a wife, and Mr. Nicholls’s distress, both give me pain.  Attachment to Mr. Nicholls you are aware I never entertained, but the poignant pity inspired by his state on Monday evening, by the hurried revelation of his sufferings for many months, is something galling and irksome.  That he cared something for me, and wanted me to care for him, I have long suspected, but I did not know the degree or strength of his feelings.  Dear Nell, good-bye.—Yours faithfully,

‘C. Brontë.

 

JAMES TAYLOR. DIED APRIL 29, 1874, AGED 57.

When Mr. Taylor returned to England in 1856 Charlotte Brontë was dead.  His after-life was more successful than happy.  He did not, it is true, succeed in Bombay with the firm of Smith, Taylor & Co.  That would seem to have collapsed.  But he made friends in Bombay and returned there in 1863 as editor of the Bombay Gazette and the Bombay Quarterly Review.  A little later he became editor of the Bombay Saturday Review, which had not, however, a long career.  Mr. Taylor’s successes were not journalistic but mercantile.  As Secretary of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce, which appointment he obtained in 1865, he obtained much real distinction.  To this post he added that of Registrar of the University of Bombay and many other offices.  He was elected Sheriff in 1874, in which year he died.  An imposing funeral ceremony took place in the Cathedral, and he was buried in the Bombay cemetery, where his tomb may be found to the left of the entrance gates, inscribed—

JAMES TAYLOR.  DIED APRIL 29, 1874, AGED 57.

 Iain MacFarlaine

 

He married during his visit to England, but the marriage was not a happy one.  That does not belong to the present story.  Here, however, is a cutting from the Times marriage record in 1863:—

‘On the 23rd inst., at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, St. Pancras, by the Rev. James Moorhouse, M.A., James Taylor, Esq., of Furnival’s-inn, and Bombay, to Annie, widow of Adolph Ritter, of Vienna, and stepdaughter of Thos. Harrison, Esq., of Birchanger Place, Essex.’

Burial: Sewri Christian Cemetery Mumbai (Bombay) Maharashtra, India

findagrave

I have had a very long letter from Mr. Williams. He speaks with much respect of Mr. Taylor.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘May 5th, 1851.

I have had a very long letter from Mr. Williams.  He speaks with much respect of Mr. Taylor.  I discover with some surprise, papa has taken a decided liking to Mr. Taylor.  The marked kindness of his manner when he bid him good-bye, exhorting him to be “true to himself, his country, and his God,” and wishing him all good wishes, struck me with some astonishment.  Whenever he has alluded to him since, it has been with significant eulogy.  When I alluded that he was no gentleman, he seemed out of patience with me for the objection.  You say papa has penetration.  On this subject I believe he has indeed.  I have told him nothing, yet he seems to be au fait to the whole business.  I could think at some moments his guesses go farther than mine.  I believe he thinks a prospective union, deferred for five years, with such a decorous reliable personage, would be a very proper and advisable affair.

 

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘November 4th, 1851.

The other day I received a long letter from Mr. Taylor.  I told you I did not expect to hear thence, nor did I.  The letter is long, but it is worth your while to read it.  In its way it has merit, that cannot be denied; abundance of information, talent of a certain kind, alloyed (I think) here and there with errors of taste.  He might have spared many of the details of the bath scene, which, for the rest, tallies exactly with Mr. Thackeray’s account of the same process.  This little man with all his long letters remains as much a conundrum to me as ever.

 

TO JAMES TAYLOR, BOMBAY

‘Haworth, November 15th, 1851.

 

‘It would seem to me a matter of great regret that the society at Bombay should be so deficient in all intellectual attraction.  Perhaps, however, your occupations will so far absorb your thoughts as to prevent them from dwelling painfully on this circumstance.  No doubt there will be moments when you will look back to London and Scotland, and the friends you have left there, with some yearning; but I suppose business has its own excitement.  The new country, the new scenes too, must have their interest; and as you will not lack books to fill your leisure, you will probably soon become reconciled to a change which, for some minds, would too closely resemble exile.

 

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘November 19th, 1851.

The little man’s disdain of the sensual pleasure of a Turkish bath had, I must own, my approval.  Before answering his epistle I got up my courage to write to Mr. Williams, through whose hands or those of Mr. Smith I knew the Indian letter had come, and beg him to give me an impartial judgment of Mr. Taylor’s character and disposition, owning that I was very much in the dark.  I did not like to continue correspondence without further information.  I got the answer, which I inclose. 

 

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘January 1st, 1852.

You ascribe to Mr. Taylor an excellent character; such a man’s friendship, at any rate, should not be disregarded; and if the principles and disposition be what you say, faults of manner and even of temper ought to weigh light in the balance.  I always believed in his judgment and good-sense, but what I doubted was his kindness—he seemed to me a little too harsh, rigid, and unsympathising.  Now, judgment, sense, principle are invaluable and quite indispensable points, but one would be thankful for a little feeling, a little indulgence in addition—without these, poor fallible human nature shrinks under the domination of the sterner qualities.  I answered Mr. Taylor’s letter by the mail of the 19th November, sending it direct, for, on reflection, I did not see why I should trouble you with it.

 gutenberg

James Taylor, a reader at the firm of Smith, Elder and Co, Charlotte Brontë’s publisher. He proposed to Charlotte, she rejected him and he went off to India

 Charlotte remained good friends with James Taylor but could not feel "enough love to accept him as a husband". James went to India, as a representative of the publishing firm. Charlotte wrote to him in India. She also wrote about her feelings for him to Ellen Nussey.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘April 23rd, 1851.

‘My dear Ellen,—I have heard from Mr. Taylor to-day—a quiet little note. He returned to London a week since on Saturday; he has since kindly chosen and sent me a parcel of books. He leaves England May 20th. His note concludes with asking whether he has any chance of seeing me in London before that time. I must tell him that I have already fixed June for my visit, and therefore, in all human probability, we shall see each other no more.
‘There is still a want of plain mutual understanding in this business, and there is sadness and pain in more ways than one. My conscience, I can truly say, does not now accuse me of  having treated Mr. Taylor with injustice or unkindness. What I once did wrong in this way, I have endeavoured to remedy both to himself and in speaking of him to others—Mr. Smith to wit, though I more than doubt whether that last opinion will ever reach him. I am sure he has estimable and sterling qualities; but with every disposition and with every wish, with every intention even to look on him in the most favourable point of view at his last visit, it was impossible to me in my inward heart to think of him as one that might one day be acceptable as a husband. It would sound harsh were I to tell even you of the estimate I felt compelled to form respecting him. Dear Nell, I looked for something of the gentleman—something I mean of the natural gentleman; you know I can dispense with acquired polish, and for looks, I know myself too well to think that I have any right to be exacting on that point. I could not find one gleam, I could not see one passing glimpse of true good-breeding. It is hard to say, but it is true. In mind too, though clever, he is second-rate—thoroughly second-rate. One does not like to say these things, but one had better be honest. Were I to marry him my heart would bleed in pain and humiliation; I could not, could not look up to him. No; if Mr. Taylor be the only husband fate offers to me, single I must always remain. But yet, at times I grieve for him, and perhaps it is superfluous, for I cannot think he will suffer much: a hard nature, occupation, and change of scene will befriend him.

‘With kind regards to all,—I am, dear Nell, your middle-aged friend,

‘C. Brontë.‘Write soon.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘May 5th, 1851.

‘My dear Ellen,—I have had a long kind letter from Miss Martineau lately. She says she is well and happy. Also, I have had a very long letter from Mr. Williams. He speaks with much respect of Mr. Taylor. I discover with some surprise, papa has taken a decided liking to Mr. Taylor. The marked kindness of his manner when he bid him good-bye, exhorting him to be "true to himself, his country, and his God," and wishing him all good wishes, struck me with some astonishment. Whenever he has alluded to him since, it has been with significant eulogy. When I alluded that he was no gentleman, he seemed out of patience with me for the objection. You say papa has penetration. On this subject I believe he has indeed. I have told him nothing, yet he seems to be au fait to the whole business. I could think at some moments his guesses go farther than mine. I believe he thinks a prospective union, deferred for five years, with such a decorous reliable personage, would be a very proper and advisable affair.

‘How has your tic been lately? I had one fiery night when this same dragon "tic" held me for some hours with pestilent violence. It still comes at intervals with abated fury. Owing to this and broken sleep, I am looking singularly charming, one of my true London looks—starved out and worn down. Write soon, dear Nell.—Yours faithfully,

‘C. Brontë.’
　 　

Ann Dinsdale's The Brontës at Haworth:

The Telegraph and Argus reviews the paperback edition of Ann Dinsdale's The Brontës at Haworth:

So much has been written about the Brontes, you might wonder what could be said about them that hasn’t been said before.
But in considering the family and their work within the social and historic context of Haworth, and exploring how the village came to be a world-famous literary shrine, Ann Dinsdale presents a thorough, comprehensive account of the Brontes and the people and places that shaped them.
In The Brontes of Haworth [sic], Ann – librarian at the Bronte Parsonage Museum – traces the story of each family member, explores their novels and poetry, and presents a detailed picture of Haworth in the mid-19th century.
The book is beautifully illustrated with rarely-seen images from the Haworth archives, including drawings by Charlotte and Emily, and haunting pictures by photographer Simon Warner.
While Ann creates a vivid picture of 19th century Haworth, she doesn’t romanticise the place. [...] bronteblog
She takes the reader to Haworth’s cluster of pubs, including the Black Bull, frequented by Branwell Bronte, and up the narrow lane at the top of Main Street, climbing past the church and Sunday school, leading to the Parsonage, “virtually the last house in Haworth before the open moors”.
She goes on to trace life beyond the Brontes; examining the legacy of their writing and developments leading to the establishment of the Bronte Parsonage Museum. (Emma Baylis)

I saw him very near, and once through my glass. His absence leave me certainly with less support and in deeper solitude than before.

Bombay Kalbadevie Road 1890

 

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘April 5th, 1851.

‘Dear Ellen,—Mr. Taylor has been and is gone; things are just as they were.  I only know in addition to the slight information I possessed before, that this Indian undertaking is necessary to the continued prosperity of the firm of Smith, Elder, & Co., and that he, Taylor, alone was pronounced to possess the power and means to carry it out successfully—that mercantile honour, combined with his own sense of duty, obliged him to accept the post of honour and of danger to which he has been appointed, that he goes with great personal reluctance, and that he contemplates an absence of five years.
‘He looked much thinner and older.  I saw him very near, and once through my glass; the resemblance to Branwell struck me forcibly—it is marked.  He is not ugly, but very peculiar; the lines in his face show an inflexibility, and, I must add, a hardness of character which do not attract.  As he stood near me, as he looked at me in his keen way, it was all I could do to stand my ground tranquilly and steadily, and not to recoil as before.  It is no use saying anything if I am not candid.  I avow then, that on this occasion, predisposed as I was to regard him very favourably, his manners and his personal presence scarcely pleased me more than at the first interview.  He gave me a book at parting, requesting in his brief way that I would keep it for his sake, and adding hastily, “I shall hope to hear from you in India—your letters have been and will be a greater refreshment than you can think or I can tell.”
‘And so he is gone; and stern and abrupt little man as he  is—too often jarring as are his manners—his absence and the exclusion of his idea from my mind leave me certainly with less support and in deeper solitude than before.
‘You see, dear Nell, though we are still precisely on the same level—you are not isolated.  I feel that there is a certain mystery about this transaction yet, and whether it will ever be cleared up to me I do not know; however, my plain duty is to wean my mind from the subject, and if possible to avoid pondering over it.  In his conversation he seemed studiously to avoid reference to Mr. Smith individually, speaking always of the “house”—the “firm.”  He seemed throughout quite as excited and nervous as when I first saw him.  I feel that in his way he has a regard for me—a regard which I cannot bring myself entirely to reciprocate in kind, and yet its withdrawal leaves a painful blank.’

 

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘April 9th, 1851

 

‘Dear Nell,—Thank you for your kind note; it was just like you to write it though it was your school-day.  I never knew you to let a slight impediment stand in the way of a friendly action.
‘Certainly I shall not soon forget last Friday, and never, I think, the evening and night succeeding that morning and afternoon.  Evils seldom come singly.

 

And soon after Mr. Taylor was gone, papa, who had been better, grew much worse.  He went to bed early, and was very sick and ill for an hour; and when at last he began to doze, and I left him, I came down to the dining-room with a sense of weight, fear, and desolation hard to express and harder to endure.  A wish that you were with me did cross my mind, but I repulsed it as a most selfish wish; indeed, it was only short-lived: my natural tendency in moments of this sort is to get through the struggle alone—to think that one is burdening and racking others makes all worse.
‘You speak to me in soft consolating accents, but I hold far sterner language to myself, dear Nell.
‘An absence of five years—a dividing expanse of three oceans—the wide difference between a man’s active career and a woman’s passive existence—these things are almost equivalent to an eternal separation.  But there is another thing which forms a barrier more difficult to pass than any of these.  Would Mr. Taylor and I ever suit? Could I ever feel for him enough love to accept him as a husband?  Friendship—gratitude—esteem I have, but each moment he came near me, and that I could see his eyes fastened on me, my veins ran ice.  Now that he is away I feel far more gently towards him; it is only close by that I grow rigid—stiffening with a strange mixture of apprehension and anger, which nothing softens but his retreat and a perfect subduing of his manner. I did not want to be proud, nor intend to be proud, but I was forced to be so.
‘Most true is it that we are over-ruled by one above us—that in his hands our very will is as clay in the hands of the potter.
‘Papa continues very far from well, though yesterday, and I hope this morning, he is a little better.  How is your mother?  Give my love to her and your sister.  How are you?  Have you suffered from tic since you returned home?  Did they think you improved in looks?
‘Write again soon.—Yours faithfully,

‘C. Brontë.’

nytimes/marshall-east
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Extracts from George Smith's - The Recollections of a long and busy life, c1895

The business of Smith, Elder & Co was now prospering and a new partner named Patrick Stewart had been taken into the firm. Stewart was the son of an Edinburgh divine of some fame and a ward of Mr Aeneas Mackintosh, at that time the head of the great firm of Mackintosh & Co, of Calcutta. He was a young man of social tastes and, in some respects, of brilliant gifts. His guardian arranged that Stewart should join my father’s firm, and advanced the necessary capital, which was to be repaid by the firm out of Stewart’s share of the profits. nineteenth_century_literary_manuscripts

The British Empire in India
The 1850s witnessed the introduction of the three "engines of social improvement" that heightened the British illusion of permanence in India. They were the railroads, the telegraph, and the uniform postal service, inaugurated during the tenure of Dalhousie as governor-general. The first railroad lines were built in 1850 from Howrah (Haora, across the Hughli River from Calcutta) inland to the coalfields at Raniganj, Bihar, a distance of 240 kilometers. In 1851 the first electric telegraph line was laid in Bengal and soon linked Agra, Bombay, Calcutta, Lahore, Varanasi, and other cities. The three different presidency or regional postal systems merged in 1854 to facilitate uniform methods of communication at an all-India level. With uniform postal rates for letters and newspapers--one-half anna and one anna, respectively (sixteen annas equalled one rupee)--communication between the rural and the metropolitan areas became easier and faster. The increased ease of communication and the opening of highways and waterways accelerated the movement of troops, the transportation of raw materials and goods to and from the interior, and the exchange of commercial information.

blogger.com/blogger

bronte-parsonage

 

Write me a line to say on what day I may expect you at Haworth

TO JAMES TAYLOR, CORNHILL

‘March 22nd, 1851.

‘My dear Sir,—Yesterday I despatched a box of books to Cornhill, including the number of the North British Review which you kindly lent me.  The article to which you particularly directed my attention was read with pleasure and interest, and if I do not now discuss it more at length, it is because I am well aware how completely your attention must be at present engrossed, since, if I rightly understood a brief paragraph in Mr. Smith’s last note, you are now on the eve of quitting England for India.
‘I will limit myself, then, to the expression of a sincere wish for your welfare and prosperity in this undertaking, and to the hope that the great change of climate will bring with it no corresponding risk to health.  I should think you will be missed in Cornhill, but doubtless “business” is a Moloch which demands such sacrifices.
‘I do not know when you go, nor whether your absence is likely to be permanent or only for a time; whichever it be, accept my best wishes for your happiness, and my farewell, if I should not again have the opportunity of addressing you.—Believe me, sincerely yours,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO JAMES TAYLOR, CORNHILL

‘March 24th, 1851

‘My dear Sir,—I had written briefly to you before I received yours, but I fear the note would not reach you in time.  I will now only say that both my father and myself will have pleasure in seeing you on your return from Scotland—a pleasure tinged with sadness certainly, as all partings are, but still a pleasure.
‘I do most entirely agree with you in what you say about Miss Martineau’s and Mr. Atkinson’s book.  I deeply regret its publication for the lady’s sake; it gives a death-blow to her future usefulness.  Who can trust the word, or rely on the judgment, of an avowed atheist?
‘May your decision in the crisis through which you have gone result in the best effect on your happiness and welfare; and indeed, guided as you are by the wish to do right and a high sense of duty, I trust it cannot be otherwise.  The change of climate is all I fear; but Providence will over-rule this too for the best—in Him you can believe and on Him rely.  You will want, therefore, neither solace nor support, though your lot be cast as a stranger in a strange land.—I am, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.

‘When you shall have definitely fixed the time of your return southward, write me a line to say on what day I may expect you at Haworth.

‘C. B.’

----------------------------------

After this move the firm was joined by a third partner and acquired its permanent designation of Smith, Elder & Co. Their new partner had important connections in India, and he brought to the firm the new department of an Indian agency. The firm began their Indian operations with the export of books and stationary to officers of the East India Company, and eventually expanded into banking and the export of other commodities. The firm's Indian interests came to be the most important and lucrative branch of their busines