Arthur Bell Nicholls

Arthur Bell Nicholls (6 January 1819 – 2 December 1906) was an Irish Anglican priest who was the husband of the English novelist Charlotte Brontë for the last nine months of her life. Between 1845 and 1861 he served as the last curate of her vicar father Patrick Brontë. After Patrick's death in 1861 he left Yorkshire for his native Ireland, and remarried.

Early years Nicholls was one of ten children born to William Nicholls, a Presbyterian farmer and Margaret Bell Nicholls, a member of the Anglican Church of Ireland in Killead, County Antrim, in Ireland. He was educated at the Royal Free School in Banagher, County Offaly, whose headmaster was his uncle, Alan Bell. In 1836 Nicholls entered Trinity College Dublin, from where he graduated in 1844.

Curate at Haworth Nicholls was ordained deacon in Lichfield in 1845 and became assistant curate to Patrick Brontë in June. Charlotte Brontë said of him that he appeared to be a respectable young man who read well, and she hoped that he would give satisfaction. In 1853 Nicholls announced his intention to leave for Australia as a missionary, but he later changed his mind despite collecting references (including one from Patrick Brontë) and a farewell gift from the parishioners. He was re-deployed for several months to another parish, but he had several secret meetings with Charlotte in Haworth. encouraged Charlotte to consider the positive aspects of such a union and tried to use her contacts to engineer an improvement in Nicholls's finances. According to James Pope-Hennessy in The Flight of Youth, it was the generosity of Richard Monckton Milnes that made the marriage possible. Gaskell judged Nicholls intransigent and bigoted, adding, however, that Charlotte "would never have been happy but with an exacting, rigid, law-giving, passionate man".

Arthur Nicholls and Charlotte Brontë were married on 29 June 1854 in her father's church at Haworth. Patrick Brontë decided on the day of the ceremony not to attend, so Charlotte was led to the altar by Margaret Wooler, her former schoolmistress at Roe Head School. They honeymooned in Wales and Ireland before returning to live with Charlotte's father at Haworth Parsonage. During her honeymoon Charlotte wrote to her friend Ellen Nussey:

On 26 December 1854 Charlotte wrote that Arthur "is certainly my dear boy, and he is dearer to me today than he was six months ago".

Charlotte Brontë's death and legacy Charlotte became pregnant soon after her wedding, but her health declined rapidly and, according to Gaskell, she was subject to "sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness". She died, along with her unborn child, on 31 March 1855, three weeks before her 39th birthday and nine months after the wedding. Ellen Nussey, a friend of Charlotte's, accused Nicholls of being "that wicked man who was the death of dear Charlotte". Since then most of this collection has been returned to Haworth Parsonage, the Brontë family museum.