[2] Although he visited the poor of the parish practically every afternoon, he was considered to be strict and conventional, and in 1847 he carried out a campaign to prevent women from hanging their washing out to dry in the cemetery.

He began to develop closer relations with Charlotte, who by that time had written Jane Eyre, and they conducted a friendly exchange of letters.

Charlotte's father vehemently refused to approve the union on the grounds that a poor Irish pastor should never be bold enough to suggest marrying his famous daughter.

[3] 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.

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.

Following Charlotte's sudden death, nine months later in 1855, Nicholls became the copyright holder of her works, making him an occasionally defensive and reluctant curator of her memory until the early twentieth century.

Arthur Nicholls was reluctant to participate, especially as it would require him granting Gaskell permission to quote directly from Charlotte's personal letters.

[6] Elizabeth Gaskell judged him intransigent and bigoted, adding, however, that Charlotte "would never have been happy but with an exacting, rigid, law-giving, passionate man".

[2] After the deaths of Charlotte and Patrick Brontë, Nicholls returned to Banagher in County Offaly, to live with his widowed aunt and her daughter, Mary Anna Bell (1830–1915), whom he married in 1864.

He left the curacy and managed a small farm, refusing to co-operate with would-be biographers who wanted to exploit his connection to the Brontës.