In Search of Anne Brontë E-Book

Nick Holland

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 507

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Anne Brontë, the youngest and most enigmatic of the Brontë sisters, remains a bestselling author nearly two centuries after her death. The brilliance of her two novels – Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – and her poetry belies the quiet, yet courageous girl who often lived in the shadows of her more celebrated sisters. Yet her writing was the most revolutionary of all the Brontës, pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. This revealing new biography opens Anne's most private life to a new audience and shows the true nature of her relationship with her sister Charlotte.

Leseprobe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many people and organisations without whom this work would not have been possible, so alongside the support of family and friends I must give special thanks to the following people: Sophie Bradshaw, a pleasure to work with, and the team at The History Press; Julie Shaw and all at the Hollybank Trust (formerly Roe Head School), a wonderful charity that can be supported via www.hollybanktrust.com; Sylvie Lain and Arthur Sansam; Dave Zdanowicz, for his stunning photography; Amanda White, whose love for the Brontës and other writers is reflected in her art; Mark de Luca, proprietor of ‘Emily’s by De Luca’ on the site of the Brontë birthplace; Diana Chaccour, National Portrait Gallery; Sylvia Thomas, President of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society; Charles Chambers, the Vina Cooke Museum; and Kit Shorten, expert on the Moravian church in Yorkshire.

Many thanks also to the British Library, Leeds City Library, Leeds University Library, Bradford City Library, Royal & Pavilion Museums, Durham University, and Julie and Steve at Ponden Hall. Special thanks must go to the Brontë Society, and especially Ann Dinsdale for her help and support. Final thanks, and without whom this labour of love really would not have been possible, to Anne Brontë herself, the courageous woman whose work continues to bring joy to me and many others.

CONTENTS

TITLE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PROLOGUE

1    

IN THE BEGINNING

2    

EARLY LOSS

3    

THE BRONTË TWINS

4    

YOUTHFUL EXPLORATIONS

5    

THE HAWORTH THAT ANNE KNEW

6    

A PURIFICATION OF FIRE

7    

GOING OUT INTO THE WORLD

8    

EXILED AND HARASSED

9    

THE BELOVED AND LAMENTED MR WEIGHTMAN

10    

SEPARATIONS AND RETURNS

11    

THE BIRTH OF ACTON BELL

12    

THE TRUE HISTORY OF AGNES GREY

13    

LIGHT FROM DARKNESS

14    

THE SCANDALOUS TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL

15    

THE BRONTË SISTERS MAKE THEIR ENTRANCE

16    

THE END OF THE UNHAPPY SCAPEGRACE

17    

THE UNBREAKABLE SPIRIT

18    

THE GLORIOUS SUNSET

19    

THE LEGACY LIVES ON

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

PLATES

COPYRIGHT

PROLOGUE

Shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture; and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend.

Agnes Grey

It is 28 May 1849 in a room in Wood’s Lodgings, a guest house in the northern resort of Scarborough. A thin, pale-faced woman gazes out at the sea far below. Beads of sweat shine on her forehead as she tries to draw in one more painful breath. Watching on despairingly are her sister Charlotte and her friend Ellen. They are in tears, but the young woman smiles as best she can. After a lifetime of regrets and fears, punctuated by brief, golden moments of love and triumph, she is completely at peace. These are the last moments of Anne Brontë. She is 29 years old.

A month earlier Anne had written to Ellen Nussey, stating that she wasn’t afraid to die, but she regretted that she could not live longer, as she longed to do something good and worthwhile in life, even if little. Anne was dying, as she had lived, in total obscurity. Nobody who saw her could have guessed that she was the much talked about Acton Bell, whose novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall had become such a cause célèbre. Nor could they have guessed that the woman alongside her was the famed Currer Bell.

In her last days, Anne was confident that the literary success that she and her elder sisters, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, had found in the last two years would be fleeting. The names of Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell would soon be forgotten, like marks in the sand that are washed away by an incoming tide. It did not trouble her: she was, after all, a woman who scorned fame and the trappings of success. Little did she know that over a century and a half later, she and her sisters would be loved and lauded across the world.

Anne, the youngest of the Brontë sisters, was in many ways the most enigmatic. Quiet and thoughtful in real life, she could seem mysterious even to those closest to her. In a letter to W.S. Williams, one of her publishers, on 31 July 1848, Charlotte wrote of Anne, ‘She does not say much for she is of a still, thoughtful nature, reserved even with her nearest of kin.’1

Nevertheless, Anne hid deep and powerful feelings within her and had led a life that was full of joys and sorrows, even though short of days. She was a woman who was always committed to the truth, however painful it could be to others.

Anne Brontë has for too long been the ‘forgotten Brontë’, an epithet that is unbecoming of her great talents as a poet and novelist. She deserves to be sought out by new readers and revisited by those who are already familiar with her work.

When we go in search of Anne Brontë we inevitably meet with difficulties. All of her youthful prose writing, in itself a prodigious output, has been lost. Only five letters by Anne are currently known to exist, although she was a keen letter writer. Nevertheless we still have more than enough source material to construct a meaningful and accurate life.

Piecing together a biography of Anne Brontë is in some ways like being a lawyer working on a case before the courts. There are lots of clues, if we choose to see them, and from these clues we can piece together a fuller picture of the truth itself. This may in some cases have to lead to supposition as to what Anne would have said, done or felt, but by examining the clues of her life we can do so with some degree of confidence, even certainty.

To a large extent we are reliant upon the testimony of others, most notably Charlotte Brontë and Ellen Nussey, but this can be very revealing, particularly when we know how to read many of Charlotte’s opinions and pronouncements. The greatest evidence of all, however, is contained within Anne’s writing itself. Yes, these are works of fiction, but as every fiction writer knows, there will always be elements of truth contained within them. Whether an author is a first-rate writer like Anne or a tenth-rate scribbler, every book will contain pieces of the person who created it. To discard this is to wilfully misunderstand the art of creating prose and poetry. Anne particularly used her novels to unburden the feelings that she was normally so careful to hide. In Agnes Grey alone, in itself quite a slender novel, we find sixty instances that are drawn directly from her actual life. To examine Anne’s writing, then, is not only rewarding, it is fruitful too, although of course we must be careful to extract the facts from the fiction.

We can now embark upon a remarkable life story. To seek out the real Anne Brontë, we must go back to the very beginning. Back twenty-nine years and four months before the scene that is playing out in Scarborough, to the village of Thornton, near Bradford, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Note

1.    Smith, Margaret (Ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 2, p.94

1

INTHE BEGINNING

My father was a clergyman of the north of England; deservedly respected by all who knew him.

Agnes Grey

The month of January 1820 was an exceptionally cold one in the north of England, and conditions were very hard for the workers of Yorkshire’s West Riding. Crops of wheat and corn had failed, peat farmers were left with nothing, and the moors and fields lay covered by a thick blanket of snow. Rivers and canals were frozen, and supplies of food and fuel were brought to a standstill.

The harvest of 1819 had been the poorest in memory, and the harsh January weather promised little respite in the year to come. People with little means and little hope were starving and freezing to death. Bodies were found in the streets, with nobody to mourn them. Families were left without breadwinners or broken up as men left the countryside and headed into the burgeoning new urban centres that offered jobs and at least a little hope for the future.

England was entering an age of increased automation, the Industrial Revolution was reaching its height and machines made by one were doing the work of many. It was a period of civil unrest, and discord hung in the air. Groups of people gathered together and plotted acts against the machines and the mill owners who used them. These men became known as Luddites, and the West Riding was a hotbed for them. They would break into factories at night, smashing machines before vanishing into the darkness, or they would intimidate mill owners and workers with threats that were sometimes bloodily carried out.

Others were taking an interest in the political sphere and agitated for suffrage for men of all social classes. Just five months previously, 80,000 people had gathered in St Peter’s Field, across the Pennines in Manchester. They had come to see Henry Hunt, a famous orator who was calling for political and social reform. Unrest grew in the crowd as the day progressed, and soon the local militia were called. These militia, not caring who was in the way, drew sabres and charged into the crowd, cutting down men, women and children. In an ironic comparison to the Battle of Waterloo that had taken place four years before, this infamous event became known as the Peterloo Massacre; it is in this world of change and unrest that Anne Brontë’s story begins.

Her father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, was a priest in the Church of England. He had been born into very inauspicious circumstances in Emdale, near the village of Drumballyroney, in County Down, Ireland. Despite spending the majority of his life in England, his Irish accent remained undimmed. Due to their very particular circumstances, most of Anne’s formative days were spent in his company, so it is little surprise that contemporary accounts state that both she and her sisters spoke with an Irish accent,1 although Charlotte was the only one who would ever see the country of her forebears.2

Through determination and the kindness of benefactors such as local landowner Reverend Thomas Tighe, Patrick secured an education at Cambridge University and was then ordained into the Anglican priesthood. Patrick saw entering Cambridge as the start of a new life, and a new life required a new name. In Ireland, his family was known by the name Brunty, but from the time of his arrival in England, he called himself Brontë. A Latin scholar, he knew that Brontë translates as thunder, and he was also aware of the castle that Lord Nelson, a hero of his,3 had near the town of Brontë in the foothills of Sicily. These factors influenced his adoption of the name that was to become so famous. It is worth noting that neither he nor his children used the familiar diaeresis, the two dots above the letter ‘e’, from the beginning.4 Patrick often used a plain ‘e’, and in their early years the sisters frequently used the French accented ‘é’ in their surname. Only later in their lives was the ‘Brontë’ we know today uniformly adopted.

After positions as an assistant curate in the south of England, Patrick was offered the role of chaplain to the Governor of Martinique. He was a very inquisitive man, whose mind thrilled at the thought of new ideas and new places. A situation in the West Indies must have seemed highly appealing to him, but it was then that fate took a hand.

The vicar of Dewsbury, John Buckworth, was looking for an enthusiastic and evangelical cleric to help him in his parish. Dewsbury, like many parishes across the West Riding of Yorkshire, was growing rapidly, and priests were in short supply. Patrick recognised this calling, and in December 1809 he headed north to a new life.

By 1810 Patrick was curate at a village parish called Hartshead, near Dewsbury. On the moor near Hartshead is a marker point known as the Dumb Steeple. It was here, on 11 April 1812, that a bloody and terrible event had its beginning. A large crowd of Luddites from the region gathered at the steeple. Their target was to be Rawfolds Mill in nearby Cleckheaton.

The mill owner was a Mr William Cartwright, a man who saw progress only in terms of the revenue that entered his coffers, and who had replaced many of his men with cropping machines that worked tirelessly day and night. Cartwright had been targeted before, and as a consequence of this he slept in his mill along with five soldiers and four armed guards.

On this particular night a crowd of over 200 Luddites headed across the moor towards the mill. Patrick watched them march past his rented home at Lousy Thorn Farm, and, guessing their intentions, made his way to Hartshead church to pray for their souls. When the men reached Cartwright’s mill they tried to gain access but were met by a hail of rifle fire from within. A group of Luddites approaching from Leeds turned and fled at this sound, and soon the fields around Rawsfold turned red with blood and were scattered with the bodies of groaning men. Two were left dead and seventeen more were later executed after the York assizes.

That same night, Patrick heard a scraping and shovelling noise. Looking out of the church window, he saw by moonlight men digging at the earth. Having heard the shots carrying across the night-time stillness, Patrick realised that they were burying others who’d been injured at the mill and had succumbed to their injuries. He left them in peace to bury the dead, and later said a prayer over the unmarked graves.5 Patrick Brontë knew what it was like to struggle with poverty.

Later that year another event took place, and it was to have the most direct impact upon Anne’s story. One of Patrick’s earliest curacies had been at Wellington in Shropshire. It was there that he made friends with a schoolmaster called John Fennell. By 1812, Mr Fennell was also in Yorkshire, and he was running a boys’ school in Rawdon, near the growing city of Leeds. Knowing his friend’s skill at Greek and Latin, John asked if he would inspect the boys in the classics. Patrick had always taken a special interest in education – he had already served as a teacher while a teenage boy in County Down – so he readily agreed to his friend’s request, and in July he commenced his role.

Patrick spent a lot of time at Woodhouse School, but the pupils weren’t his only interest. It was there that he met, and fell quickly in love with, a woman, then 29 years old, by the name of Maria Branwell. Maria was the niece of John Fennell and had come to the school from Penzance, leaving behind her sisters Elizabeth and Charlotte, to assist her cousin Jane with the domestic duties of the establishment.

Eros cast his spell upon them both. It was a whirlwind romance, such as that which can rapidly consume two lonely souls a long way from home and family. They sent each other frank and loving letters, in which Maria playfully referred to Mr Brontë as her ‘saucy Pat’. On 29 December of that year they were married in the parish church of Guiseley. On the same day, and at the same ceremony, Maria’s cousin Jane Fennell married William Morgan, a curate who was an established friend of Patrick Brontë. The two friends performed the ceremonies for each other, sealing bonds that would last a lifetime.

Anne would later lament that she was unable to remember anything of her mother, but she was left in no doubt that she had been a very pious and intelligent woman, and indeed she had written an essay entitled ‘The Advantages of Poverty, in Religious Concerns’.6

The Branwells were a well-established family in Cornwall society and were staunch supporters of the Methodist cause, which was at the time having a revolutionary impact on the Church of England, from which it hadn’t as yet split. Her father, Thomas, was a wealthy merchant with a keen love of music, but both he and his wife, Anne, had died before Maria came to Yorkshire. As the title of Maria’s essay shows, she was predisposed to love a poor clergyman like Patrick Brontë, despite her own more exalted background.

It may seem strange that her wealthy relatives did nothing to help her transition into married life, but it is likely that they disapproved of the match and so cut her out of any inheritance or financial help that she could otherwise have expected. Years later Anne Brontë was to hint at this on the very first page of her novel Agnes Grey, where Agnes reveals a family background very much like that of the author. After revealing that her father was a northern clergyman, she continues:

My mother, who married him against the wishes of her friends, was a squire’s daughter, and a woman of spirit. In vain it was represented to her, that if she became the poor parson’s wife, she must relinquish her carriage and her lady’s-maid, and all the luxuries and elegance of affluence … but she would rather live in a cottage with Richard Grey than in a palace with any other man in the world.7

Whilst Anne exaggerated the wealth and position of the Branwell family here, there is more than an element of truth to this portrait.

From a surviving portrait we can see that Maria Brontë, née Branwell, had long, curly hair, like Anne, and striking eyes, like Charlotte, above a long aquiline nose. Despite their lack of monetary resources, and a life very different to the one left behind in Cornwall, she and Patrick were very much in love. It was during this first year of their marriage that Patrick wrote and published his first volume of poems, The Rural Minstrel, setting down his belief in a loving God and the importance of a life without sin.

At the beginning of 1814 their first child, Maria, was born, and from her earliest days she seemed to be an exceptional child. A year later, a sister, Elizabeth, arrived. They were now a happy band of four, but it was a struggle for Patrick to meet the needs of his growing family, especially as his incumbency at Hartshead included no parsonage, leaving him to pay the rent for his little cottage at Lousy Thorn Farm out of his small annual stipend.

Providence was to shine upon them, however. Shortly after Elizabeth’s birth, Patrick received a very timely and most interesting proposal from Reverend Thomas Atkinson, the curate of Thornton. Reverend Atkinson was a man of independent means, not reliant on the larger income that Thornton offered, but he had his eyes on a very different prize. He was in love with Frances Walker of Lascelles Hall near Huddersfield. He’d met Frances on many occasions at Kipping House in Thornton, home of the Firth family who were related to the Walkers. Thomas believed that by moving closer to Lascelles Hall, he could form stronger ties with her. In this he was not wrong, as they would later be married.

It was for this reason that Reverend Atkinson suggested to Patrick Brontë that they swap parishes. Thornton offered an increased income and came with a rent-free parsonage building. Patrick, of course, quickly accepted, and once the archbishop gave his assent, the Brontë family made the move to Thornton in May of 1815.

Thornton is a semi-industrial village on the outskirts of the city of Bradford. Its church, of which Patrick had now been made incumbent, was known as the Old Bell Chapel and was positioned at the southern end of the village, in a remote aspect surrounded by fields. The Church of England was not strong in Thornton, and most of the populace attended the dissenting chapels and schools, a problem that he was to face in his next parish as well and one that was becoming increasingly common across the West Riding of Yorkshire as a whole.

Other than the church, the main building of Thornton was Kipping House, home to the aforementioned Firth family who were to become so important to the Brontës. Kipping House is a very beautiful and imposing building, dating from the seventeenth century but largely rebuilt and extended in the eighteenth century. The Firths were the undoubted leaders of Thornton society and keen Church of England supporters. At the time Patrick arrived, with his wife and two young children, only John Firth and his daughter Elizabeth lived at the house, Mrs Firth having been killed in a tragic accident a year earlier when thrown from a horse.

The Firth family made the Brontës very welcome, and as Elizabeth Firth’s diary entries reveal, they spent much time at Kipping House.8 Soon after arriving in Thornton, Maria’s sister, also called Elizabeth, came to help look after the children. She would stay for a year at first, but she then returned at regular intervals; in later years, she made her permanent home with the family, a move that would have a profound effect on all of them, particularly Anne.

On 21 April 1816, another girl was born into the Brontë family. She was christened Charlotte after Maria’s sister. At this time, and with Aunt Elizabeth no longer in residence, further help was needed, and Nancy Garrs was taken on as a nanny. Nancy and her sister Sarah were to remain friends and helpers of the family from then on, even after they were no longer employed by them. They were the first of a succession of servants who would form a close bond above and beyond the call of duty with the Brontës.

In June 1817, Patrick and Maria were at last blessed with a boy. He was christened Patrick but would always be known by his middle name Branwell; taking on the name his mother had given up on her wedding day. The parents felt blessed: at last a boy to take their name forward. They hatched great plans for him and prayed for a glorious future for one whose duty it would be to take the Brontë name forward into the world.

On 30 July 1818 the fifth child was born, Anne’s dear, beloved sister Emily Jane. By now, things were again becoming difficult for Patrick and Maria. Thornton Parsonage was a terraced building in the middle of Market Street, on a hilly trajectory, far away from the church itself, with a small walled garden at the back. The building was often in need of repair, and Patrick wrote to the Archbishop of York, and to a friend named Richard Burn, calling it a ‘very ill constructed and inconvenient building’.9 He now had a family of seven in the house, as well as Nancy Garrs, and suffered much from lack of space and resources.

Nevertheless, the family was not yet finished. On 17 January 1820, Maria was to deliver another child, in front of the roaring fire at Thornton Parsonage, with the village midwife in attendance. Patrick was at the church, offering up thanks and prayers. The Brontë children had been taken for the day to Kipping House, where they were entertained by Elizabeth Firth. She kept a detailed diary of this time, and from it we get glimpses of how Maria, just turned 6 years old, was already ordering the younger children around and how Charlotte acted like quite the young lady, taking great care over her manners. Elizabeth, Branwell and young Emily would have stood transfixed by the sight of snow falling outside of the large windows that looked out on to extensive grounds stretching out on to the Thornton moors.10

It was on that day that Anne was born. A small and delicate child at birth, all who saw her in those first days fell in love with the tiny and quiet baby. Anne was later baptised, as her brother and sisters had been, by Reverend William Morgan. She was named after her maternal grandmother, and her godmothers were Elizabeth Firth and Miss Fanny Outhwaite, Elizabeth’s close friend, a pillar of polite society and well known to Anne’s parents. How well chosen they were, for although they were soon to be distanced from Anne, they would provide acts of kindness on her behalf throughout her life. It was thanks to Miss Outhwaite, and a legacy that she left to her god-daughter, that Anne was able to make her final journey to Scarborough.

On that day in January 1820 the family was complete, and complete in their happiness. Maria and Patrick, and their children, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily Jane and Anne were not wealthy by any standards, but they had an abundance of love and a belief in a bright future stretching out ahead of them.

Notes

1.    Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, p.172

2.    On the occasion of Charlotte’s honeymoon, see chapter 19

3.    Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, p.2

4.    Green, Dudley, Patrick Brontë Father Of Genius, p.13

5.    Green, Dudley, Patrick Brontë Father Of Genius, pp.59–60

6.    Manuscript now held in the Leeds University library special collection

7.    Brontë, Anne, Agnes Grey, p.3

8.    Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, p.2

9.    Green, Dudley, Patrick Brontë Father Of Genius, p.70

10.  Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, p.1

2

EARLY LOSS

In all we do and hear, and see,

Is restless Toil and Vanity,

While yet the rolling earth abides,

Men come and go like ocean tides;

And ere one generation dies;

Another in its place shall rise;

That, sinking soon into the grave,

Others succeed, like wave on wave.

Vanitas Vanitatum, Omnia Vanitas

Anne was not to stay in Thornton long. Just three months after her birth, the Brontës were making a trip across the moors to Haworth. A new life awaited them, a life full of hope, tragedy, laughter and loss. One wagon carried their meagre possessions, and another carried the family. Always a keen walker, Patrick walked alongside the carriage the whole way. From time to time Anne would have been passed down from her mother within the carriage to her father, to be carried safely in his arms. At other times, Emily would be passed to him and would ride piggyback on her father’s shoulders. It is a journey of only 8 miles, yet full of undulations, steep inclines and unfirm ground. Progress was slow before they reached the steep Kirkgate, today known as Main Street, which would lead to their new home. The carriage ride took a full day, but for Patrick it was the culmination of a journey that had lasted months.

Patrick had already complained of the inadequacies of the Thornton Parsonage and was looking for a new, larger parish to meet the demands of his growing family. When the incumbency of Haworth became available, it was offered to Patrick; however, problems quickly arose. Haworth was, and is, a parish like no other. From ancient times Haworth council of elders had held the right to select its own curate, rejecting the choice of the vicar of Bradford, at this time Reverend Henry Heap, who would ordinarily control the rights to the parish. This would normally have been a formality, but the vicar was a man unused to having his actions questioned and had not consulted the council of Haworth elders before announcing the choice of Reverend Brontë as the new priest. They immediately let it be known that they would not accept this priest who had been foisted upon them.1

In this they were not expressing any slight against Patrick himself but merely exercising their powers. They were hardy and stubborn, although kind-hearted, folk, and when roused they would not back down. Recognising this, and mindful of stirring up any real enmity, Patrick politely declined the offer of the Haworth curacy.2

A new choice was needed, but once more the vicar of Bradford chose not to consult the elders and instead appointed Reverend Samuel Redhead to the position. Redhead had often officiated at Haworth during the prolonged illness of the previous incumbent, Reverend Charnock, and had been well liked by the congregation, so it is likely that Heap foresaw no problem with this appointment. The Haworth men, however, saw it as a great affront; at Reverend Redhead’s first Sunday service, the parishioners stamped on the stone floor with their clogs until he could not be heard, before walking out en masse.3

The second week was much worse. As the sermon commenced, a great uproar was heard. A drunk chimney sweep, seemingly oblivious to what was happening, had ridden into the church on a donkey. He was facing backwards and shouting as if he could feel the fires of hell. The sweep was then sat in the front pew; he stared at the poor curate all the time, swaying from side to side occasionally. At last he rose unsteadily to his feet, climbed to the pulpit and fell on to Reverend Redhead, to general hilarity from the stalls. The atmosphere then grew worse still, and the reverend had to wrestle his way through the crowd. He managed to reach the safety of the Black Bull Inn next to the church, but a mob had gathered outside and were threatening his very life. By luck and intrigue, Mr Redhead made good his escape by way of the inn’s back door and a nearby horse, but it was clear that his curacy at Haworth could not continue. In later years, Redhead occasionally acted as a guest preacher at Haworth, often joking about the incident, and he was well received by the locals, who had once been much less welcoming to him.

An impasse had been reached. Patrick acted as a mediator of sorts, with assistance from the Bishop of Ripon, and after speaking to the parish elders they agreed to nominate him to the position of curate, which the vicar would then accept. In this way, pride and tradition were restored, and Patrick Brontë found himself the new curate at Haworth after all, a position he held until the end of his life.

Thus, on 20 April 1820, the Brontë family, along with Nancy Garrs and her sister Sarah, moved into the Haworth Parsonage. It is a lovely Georgian building, set apart from the rest of the village, although it proved somewhat cold in winter. The parsonage was built in 1775; it had, and indeed still has, a not overly spacious garden to the front, where currant and lilac bushes, along with laburnum and cherry trees, grew. In day time, at that period, it was infused with light, as Patrick would not allow any curtains in the windows because of a morbid fear of fire, in part due to the many funerals he had presided over for victims of conflagrations.

Anne could remember nothing, of course, of those first few days, but her father often spoke of them as the happiest of his life. His family were all around him, and his days were full. The parish was large and flourishing, and every week brought baptisms, weddings and funerals. At this point he was at the height of his physical and mental powers, and he met the challenge head on.

Anne’s mother was happy too. Maria had a large house to manage and a loving brood around her at all hours. Her presence was much in demand among the wives of the elders and merchants of Haworth, and she remained in correspondence with her good friends from Thornton. As Anne lay burbling in her cradle, arms outstretched for the happy although as yet unrecognisable faces that gazed down at her, Haworth Parsonage was full of noise and full of life. It was not to last long.

The day was 29 January 1821. The Brontës had been in Haworth for less than a year. Nothing had presaged the event. A day earlier, Maria had been her usual self, tidying, cleaning and organising. Ensuring that everything was in its rightful place.

In the morning she came downstairs, but her face was paler than before. She tried to reach the dining table, but fell with a thud to the floor, where she screamed in pain. Maria was Patrick’s whole world; he ran for the local doctor, but when the doctor came he said that she was eaten by a cancer of sorts and would not last the day. It would have been less cruel for Maria if that had indeed been true.

Maria Brontë was strong and determined: she clung to her new family for as long as she could, enduring torments that could not be borne by many. For Patrick this was a dreadful trial, but it was also a portent of what was yet to come. At times, his wife would cry out in pain and shout, ‘There can be no God that lets me suffer like this!’4 Then later she would be full of terror and curse herself for having spoken against her Lord. For many days, she could not speak at all, could not move.

In May her sister Elizabeth came to stay to help nurse the sibling that she loved so much. Nobody knew at the time that Haworth was now to be her home until her dying day. Aunt Branwell, as she became known to Anne and her siblings, was greatly affected by what she saw happen to her sister and by the sacrifice that she later had to make. Later biographers, including Elizabeth Gaskell, would make much of her stern aspect,5 but to Anne and Branwell at least, she was always loved and respected as a second mother.

Patrick refused to give up hope; as always, he turned to the faith that told him anything was possible. He hired a succession of specialists to see Maria, and when they said there was nothing to be done, he dismissed them and turned to others. His wife lingered terribly for eight months, until she left this world on 15 September 1821.

Anne was just 18 months old, and yet she still felt somehow to blame whenever she heard the tale. Maria was already 30 when she had her first child; within seven years, she gave birth to six children, Anne being the last. People whispered that it was this that proved too much for her and caused the cancer that ate her away. Anne must have wondered whether her mother would have lived a full life if she herself had never been born.

It is commonly related today that Maria died of uterine cancer, and yet in the early 1970s a medical expert came up with a different and convincing diagnosis.6 Professor Philip Rhodes was not only a Brontë lover, he was also a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of London’s St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School. In his opinion, it is very unlikely that a woman would die of uterine cancer after giving birth healthily six times, including one birth just a year and a half earlier. It is also highly unusual for this cancer to occur in women under the age of 40, and Maria was 38 at the time of her death. Professor Rhodes diagnosed the cause of death as chronic pelvic sepsis with anaemia, resulting in extreme pain and blood poisoning that would lead to a fatal cardiac arrest. The cause of this deadly infection was poor antenatal care after the birth of Anne, at a time when gynaecological knowledge was very limited.

From an early age Anne was a deeply thoughtful person, who would consider whether her actions, all of her actions, were right or wrong. As a child, when the bed chamber candles were snuffed out she would think of the mother that she could not remember, and she would wonder how different things could have been. She added it to the list of sins that she stored and carried around within her for the rest of her life, until she finally reached the destination that would free her from sin forever.

Patrick was now 44, with a family of six children, a job that took up every moment of his time and not a penny to his name. All the savings he had gathered had been spent, in vain, on medical treatment for Maria. The Brontës were now rescued from the very real threat of poverty by the power of friendship, and the kindness of their fellow man, as Patrick’s friends rallied around him and his family. The Firths, Outhwaites, Fennells, Morgans and more proved good and true. Between them, and despite his protestations, they paid off all of Patrick’s not inconsiderable debts.7

Patrick Brontë’s marriage had not been one of convenience, as so many were in his day, but a match of true love. He had no desire to marry again, but he knew that it was expected of him, and he also recognised that it would be beneficial to his young family. His sister-in-law Elizabeth encouraged him in this endeavour too. She herself had hopes of securing a husband one day, but time’s winged chariot was moving on. Elizabeth Branwell had made a promise to her sister to look after her children for as long as it was needed. In Elizabeth’s mind, this meant until Patrick took a new bride, at which point she could leave Haworth behind and resume her search for a husband.

Eventually, worn down by these arguments, Patrick asked Anne’s godmother, Elizabeth Firth, to marry him. The year was 1822, and by now Elizabeth’s father had died, leaving a fortune to her alone. She was young, rich, in good health, held Patrick in great esteem and both knew and loved the Brontë children. Alas, for Patrick and his family, she had her heart set elsewhere. She declined in the kindliest manner and was later to marry a Reverend James Franks of Huddersfield.

Mr Brontë made two more attempts to find a bride, and one in particular was most forthright, not to say hurtful, in her rejection. This was Mary Burder, a young woman he knew from his days as a curate in Essex. Patrick had briefly been engaged to her, but had broken the engagement off when he was offered the curacy in Wellington. She was now to let him know, via a brutally honest letter telling him that his contact was not remotely welcome, that all had not been forgiven.8 A new plan was needed. It became clear that although Patrick was much respected as a clergyman of some repute, his age and lack of wealth, and the burden of a large family dependent upon him, meant he would never find a woman who would consent to be his bride. You may wonder why Patrick did not enter into a marriage of convenience with his late wife’s sister? Such marriages had been common, even expected, in earlier centuries, but by this time unions of that nature were specifically prohibited by law.

Elizabeth Branwell had a deep belief in the importance of accepting God’s will, and in putting it before any longings or needs of one’s own. She locked away all hopes of married life and confined herself for evermore to what would become to her the prison of Haworth Parsonage. Although she had once hoped, even expected, to be married, this abandonment of her original plan may have come as some relief, especially when she considered what marriage and child bearing had brought her sister. Patrick too, put all such plans aside. From now on, his mission in life would be to do his best for God, and for his daughters and only son.

Branwell was, from birth, the true hope of the family. He was a precocious boy who loved to talk and laugh, and Patrick dreamed of a life for him as an officer in the king’s army (King George IV being then on the throne). Nevertheless, Patrick Brontë was a man of enlightened views on many subjects. He saw education as being important for daughters as well as sons, and he believed that women could make strong and worthwhile careers for themselves, if given the encouragement and tools to do so. This view was at odds with that commonly held in the early nineteenth century, where girls were trained to do housework and little else, or given the skills that would help them attract a husband in later life.

Patrick devised a teaching plan for all of the children except for Emily and Anne, who were still too young at the time, although they soon longed to be included. Aunt Branwell would teach sewing, cookery and household management during the day, as well as reading from the scriptures, but in the afternoon the elder sisters were permitted to join Branwell in their papa’s study, where Patrick would give them lessons on more learned themes, from history to politics and languages.

It soon became evident that one child in particular had a rather brilliant aptitude for learning. The eldest Brontë sister Maria had a remarkable mind. Once something had been said to her, she could remember it forever. That was true with the lessons she learned from her father, and with the lessons she learned when she was later sent away to school. She was ever of a forthright, though kindly, nature and was quick to form her opinions on subjects and to explain her point of view to others.

Patrick would later say how he cherished every moment that he spent teaching his eldest daughter and looked forward to it as a bright spot in the day. He boasted proudly that he could converse with Maria, then only 9 years of age, on any of the leading topics of the day as freely, and with as much pleasure, as with any adult.

Maria took great care of her younger brother and sisters, so that by 10 years old she had become as another mother to them, and it was a role she was happy to fulfil.9 She would sit Anne on her knee, and as her youngest sister gazed up into her kindly hazel eyes, she would read the papers to her siblings and explain the situation in countries across the globe.

Throughout their lives, the surviving sisters would often wonder how things would have been if Maria had lived and whether she would have joined them in their writing endeavours. What works have been lost to history we shall never know, but the contemplation of it grieved Charlotte in particular, before she paid tribute to her twenty-two years after her death. Helen Burns, that kindest, most courageous young girl in Jane Eyre, was a fitting portrait of their loved and lost sister Maria. Years after she had last seen her, Charlotte still recalled her fortitude and calm spirit, as well as the way she was mistreated by her teachers:

Burns immediately left the class, and going into the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scratcherd with a respectful curtsey; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosened her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns’ eye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression.10

Charlotte later confirmed to Elizabeth Gaskell that these sections had been drawn from real life, and that Maria had been the constant and undeserving recipient of punishment from one particularly brutal teacher, insisting that ‘not a word of that part of Jane Eyre but is a literal repetition of scenes between the pupil and the teacher’.11

Patrick was a keen believer in the power of education. It had taken him from a poor village in Ireland, via Cambridge University, to a position of great respect. For these reasons, he spent many summers campaigning to build a Sunday school in Haworth, and at last he succeeded. The school building is still in place alongside the parsonage, and all his children taught there from time to time. It was this same love of education that made him decide to send his daughters to school.

He and his sister-in-law were dedicated to their didactic cause, but if his daughters were to gain roles as governesses or teachers, those being the careers most suited to ladies of their social position, they would need a broader education. Anne’s godmothers, Elizabeth and Fanny, recommended a school called Crofton Hall, near Wakefield. They had both been scholars there and found it to be a perfect stimulus for young minds, and a school where the spiritual and temporal needs of the pupils were taken care of.

Maria and Elizabeth were sent there in the summer of 1823. Elizabeth did not possess the intellectual brilliance of Maria, but she had a kind soul and seemed full of vigour and health. If anything practical needed to be done, Elizabeth would be the first to volunteer her help. She liked nothing more than cleaning and tidying, just as her mother had done; in contrast her elder sister preferred reading to housework.

The two sisters enjoyed their first term at school and were making good progress both in their lessons and in terms of making friends. Maria and Elizabeth were the most gregarious and outgoing of the Brontë girls. They, like their brother, would have been happy to look anyone in the eye and talk to them, whereas even from a young age Charlotte, Emily and Anne were crippled by shyness. Maria and Elizabeth had everything needed to be a success in life, but when they returned home at Christmas 1823, their days were already running out.

Patrick was happy with the schooling they received, but the fees for Crofton Hall reflected its excellent reputation. The cost was £28 per pupil per year. Anne’s wealthy godmother Elizabeth was subsidising this cost but Patrick knew that she could not be asked to pay for the three further sisters who would also need schooling in their turn.

It was at this point that he heard of another school that had been newly formed, and it seemed perfect for his girls. It was called the Clergy Daughters’ School, and it offered schooling on reduced terms for daughters of curates such as Patrick. This seemed a heaven-sent opportunity, but how he would later curse the day that it opened. Charlotte, still grief stricken at the things she saw there, reproduced it faithfully in the harrowing portrayal of Lowood, a school where death was dispensed along with lessons.

The beginning of 1824 saw epidemics of whooping cough and measles sweep through Haworth, and the Brontës were not immune. All of the Brontë children caught it, although the consequences were not as serious as they were for some of the village’s young, who by then lay buried in the graveyard beyond the parsonage’s garden gate. For this reason, the entry of Maria and Elizabeth to their new school was delayed until July of 1824. Their destination was Cowan Bridge, in Westmorland, and their father journeyed with them, keen to inspect the school himself. He stayed a night and shared a meal with his daughters before returning home, professing himself happy with the establishment.12 In September, Elizabeth Firth, or Franks as she was by then called, having just married her reverend suitor, also visited Cowan Bridge and found no cause for concern.13 If only they could have known that the proprietor, a Reverend Carus Wilson, put on a rather different show for visitors than could be expected during the school’s normal daily routine.

Mr Wilson believed that fear and want were better teachers than love and comfort, and his school was perfect in every way for his hypothesis. It was a cold and desolate place, subject to the freezing winds of the north, and unhealthy in every aspect. Food was scarce and lacking any kind of sustenance, and harsh punishments were exacted for sins and offences that were never explained. He was a Calvinist through and through, and he believed that want and suffering were the rightful way of this world that provides but a temporary shelter.

Charlotte joined her older sisters on 24 August, having taken longer to recover from her whooping cough. What she saw and heard would stay with her forever and was later to be poured out into the opening of her famous novel.

Emily was sent to them on 25 November. At just 6 years old, she was the youngest pupil and had been given special dispensation to attend. In the months preceding this, being the only girls at home, Anne and Emily had grown even closer to each other, and both wept as Emily left for the coach that would carry her to Westmorland.

Emily was the darling of the school, and she was shielded from some of the harsh treatments that were handed out to others not so fortunate. Sickness would spread through Cowan Bridge at regular intervals, and typhus and cholera were frequent visitors. The sick slept side by side with the healthy, with inevitable consequences.

Charlotte and Patrick were both vehement in later life that the descriptions of Lowood in Jane Eyre were studies drawn from real life:

That forest-dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and fog-bred pestilence; which, quickening with the quickening spring, crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through its crowded schoolroom and dormitory, and, ere May arrived, transformed the seminary into a hospital.14

Charlotte often asked herself why she, or her sisters, never wrote to their father to reveal the true nature of the Clergy Daughters’ School. In truth they were frightened to do so, and they may not have believed that the letters would be sent, as all mail was opened and inspected before being placed into eager hands. This was, in fact, set in stone by the 8th rule of the official Cowan Bridge regulations that stated, ‘All letters and parcels are inspected by the superintendent’.15

By 14 February 1825, it was already too late. Maria Brontë was sent home from Cowan Bridge in ‘ill health’, as the school register records. Once she reached Haworth it was apparent to her father and the physicians that she was in an advanced and hopeless state of consumption, or tuberculosis. The happy beaming girl, bright in every sense, had been replaced by a living skeleton without the strength to smile. Four other girls were also sent home from the school on the same day, and two of them had reached their heaven before Maria was called there on 6 May. By this date, twenty-eight of the seventy-seven pupils at Cowan Bridge were recorded as being in ‘ill health’.

On 31 May, Elizabeth was also sent home in this all-encompassing ‘ill health’. She was accompanied by the school housekeeper, who promptly presented Patrick with a bill upon her arrival. Elizabeth died on 15 June, and she was buried by her father, next to her mother and elder sister.

By now, even Reverend Wilson had to acknowledge the truth: if the children remained at his school, not one would survive. Cowan Bridge was closed temporarily, and on the day that Elizabeth was sent home, the children were transferred to a lodging that Reverend Wilson owned near to Morecambe on the Lancashire coast.

From the moment the heartbroken Patrick had set eyes on his second dying daughter, however, he had decided to take action of his own. On the day after Elizabeth’s arrival, he took a coach to Morecambe and collected Charlotte and Emily. From now on he was determined to keep an eye on his daughters, come what may, and hold them in the safety of his own keeping. We can only surmise what words he had for Reverend Wilson, but Patrick Brontë was a very forthright man when sorely tried. From that day on, whenever their paths would cross, Reverend Carus Wilson would try to thwart whatever Patrick was doing.

One of Anne’s earliest memories was lining up with her brother and two, now only two, sisters to look into Elizabeth’s open casket.16 We can imagine how Aunt Branwell lifted Anne up and said to her the words that would often be spoken during Maundy Thursday services: ‘Your sister suffers no more, Anne, but look on this and remember, that dust thou art, and to dust thou will return.’ ‘I remember, Aunt,’ she would say for the rest of her days, ‘I remember.’

Where were the bards to offer up an elegy to the sisters, so untimely taken? Who would remember them? Their brother, who had adored his eldest sister, wrote the poem ‘Caroline’, which is actually about Maria, in her memory. His reference to ‘mother’ is the role played by his aunt. The many sufferings he endured as a young child would have a dreadful effect on his later life.

I stooped to pluck a rose that grew

Beside this window waving then;

But back my little hand withdrew,

From some reproof of inward pain;

For she who loved it was not there

To check me with her dove-like eye,

And something bid my heart forbear

Her favourite rose-bud to destroy.

Was it that bell – that funeral bell,

Sullenly sounding on the wind?

Was it that melancholy knell

Which first to sorrow woke my mind?

I looked upon my mourning dress,

Til my heart beat with childish fear,

And frightened at my loneliness,

I watched, some well-known sound to hear ...

My father’s stern eye dropt a tear,

Upon the coffin resting there.

My mother lifted me to see,

What might within that coffin be;

And to this moment I can feel

The voiceless gap – the sickening chill –

With which I hid my whitened face

In the dear folds of her embrace ...

There lay she then, as now she lies –

For not a limb has moved since then –

In dreamless slumber closed, those eyes

That never more may wake again.

She lay, as I had seen her lie

On many a happy night before,

When I was humbly kneeling by –

Whom she was teaching to adore;

Oh, just as when by her I prayed,

And she to heaven sent up her prayer,

She lay with flowers about her head –

Though formal grave-clothes hid her hair!17

So it was that Charlotte, having just turned 9, became the oldest child, and she changed from that moment. Despite being close to her brother and sisters in age, she herself acted like a mother as well as a sister, with all that entails. Charlotte made decisions for them, always doing what she felt was best, however others may judge her actions, but the cost to her was too great. Anne would see how she suffered and understand the reason why. Charlotte’s wild flashes of temper, the dark moods that often overtook her, were the external symptoms of the grief that had been growing within her since she lost the three people she loved most in such quick succession. She had to sit through lessons, suffer chastisements and punishments, while nearby her sisters were perishing before her eyes. ‘Dear Lord God,’ pleaded Anne as she spent her last hours in Scarborough, ‘please let Charlotte find peace after I’ve gone.’

Notes

1.    Green, Dudley, Patrick Brontë Father Of Genius, pp.78–9

2.    Green, Dudley, Patrick Brontë Father Of Genius, p.79–80

3.    Green, Dudley, Patrick Brontë Father Of Genius, p.82–4

4.    On 27 November 1821, Patrick wrote to John Buckland: ‘During many years, she had walked with God; but the great enemy, envying her life of holiness, often disturbed her mind in the last conflict.’ Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, p.104

5.    ‘Miss Branwell was, I believe, a kindly and conscientious woman, with a good deal of character, but with the somewhat narrow ideas natural to one who had spent nearly all her life in the same place. She had strong prejudices, and soon took a distaste to Yorkshire.’ Gaskell, Elizabeth, The Life Of Charlotte Brontë, p.96

6.    Rhodes, Philip, ‘A Medical Appraisal Of The Brontës’, Brontë Society Transactions 1972, pp.101–2

7.    Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, p.105

8.    ‘I know of no ties of friendship ever existing between us which the last eleven or twelve years has not severed or at least placed an insuperable bar to any revival.’ From Mary Burder’s letter to Patrick Brontë, 18 August 1823. Green, Dudley, Patrick Brontë Father Of Genius, pp.97–8

9.    Barker, Juliet, The Brontës, p.111

10.  Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre, p.45

11.  Gaskell, Elizabeth, The Life Of Charlotte Brontë, p.104

12.  Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, p.20

13.  Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, p.24

14.  Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre, p.65

15.  Gaskell, Elizabeth, The Life Of Charlotte Brontë, p.98

16.  Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, p.26

17.  Neufeldt, Victor A. (Ed.), The Works Of Patrick Branwell Brontë: 1837–1848, p.413–4

3

THE BRONTË TWINS

That I might simply fancy there

One little flower – a primrose fair,

Just opening into sight;

As in the days of infancy,

An opening primrose seemed to me,

A source of strange delight.

‘Memory’

‘Papa, come quickly! Papa, please come, there’s an angel standing next to Anne’s cradle!’

Charlotte tugged at her father’s sleeve as he sat behind his writing desk.

Patrick looked at her incredulously. He was a man who valued his privacy, and all his children were taught to knock and wait before entering his study. Yet here was his 5-year-old daughter in a state of agitation, her eyes wide with excitement.

‘Please come quickly, there’s an angel looking over Anne’, Charlotte insisted.

A smile broke out on her father’s face: he would humour his daughter this time.

‘Come on then, dear Charlotte, we can’t keep an angel waiting can we?’

When they reached Anne’s cradle they found her smiling contentedly as usual, quietly observing the world around her.

‘He’s gone! You were too late, and the angel is gone!’, shouted Charlotte, and she stamped her feet in frustration.

Patrick laughed heartily at this, which only served to make Charlotte even angrier and more frustrated.

Whether an angel was looking over Anne or not in her childhood we leave you to determine, but it is a tale of Anne’s infancy that both Patrick Brontë and Nancy Garrs would repeat.1 If nothing else, it is a testament to how calm, contented and angelic Anne herself was as a baby.