Charlotte Bronte, Returning Home

I’m currently planning my own honeymoon for next year, so perhaps I should take inspiration from Charlotte Brontë? On this day in 1854 Charlotte Brontë Nicholls, as she now styled herself, was in Dublin at the end of her month-long honeymoon in Ireland – home of her father Patrick and of her new husband Arthur Bell Nicholls.

In today’s new post we look at two letters Charlotte sent on this day as she prepared to return home, and at how life changed once she was back in Haworth Parsonage. The first of these letters was sent to loyal servant, and friend, Martha Brown:

The second letter was sent on the same day, 28th July 1854, to Charlotte’s great friend and sole bridesmaid Ellen Nussey:

This must have been a tiring month for Charlotte, but it is clearly one that the new bride enjoyed greatly. Each stop on her Irish tour brought delights, and sometimes challenges. In Killarney, for example, she and Arthur had been riding horses through the spectacular ‘Gap of Dunloe’. In Charlotte’s own words, “A sudden glimpse of a very grim phantom came on us in the Gap.” Charlotte’s horse reared up and threw her from the horse. She lay helpless as it “seemed to go mad – reared – plunged”. Arthur managed to lead the horse away and fortuitously Charlotte had avoided the horses hooves when she could so easily have been killed.

In Kilkee (shown at the top of this post), Charlotte and Arthur enjoyed the bracing sea air at the growing resort. Charlotte is still remembered at the resort alongside another, rather different, visitor to Kilkee: Che Guevara. 

Throughout all of this honeymoon Charlotte has had her home, and father, firmly on her mind, but what would life be like once she returned to the Parsonage she had called home since she moved there aged 34 years earlier? We get a report in another letter sent from Charlotte to Ellen, this time on 9th August, 8 days after her arrival back in Haworth:

“Since I came home I have not had an unemployed moment; my life is changed indeed – to be wanted continually – to be constantly called for and occupied seems so strange: yet it is a marvellously good thing. As yet I don’t quite understand how some wives grow so selfish. As far as my experience of matrimony goes – I think it tends to draw you out of, and away from yourself.”

If you are on holiday now, or even on honeymoon, I wish you a very pleasant one. Summer seems to have returned to Yorkshire, a perfect opportunity to relax in the sun with a good book. I hope to see you next week for another new Brontë blog post.