Aunt Branwell and the Brontë Legacy

by Aunt Branwell

  Chapter 5

  Music, Dancing, and Society

  ‘Existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered – you must have music, dancing, and society – or you languish, you die away.’

  Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

  Cornwall may have been all but an island, geographically and socio-politically, during the years that Elizabeth Branwell grew up there, but the town of Penzance was certainly not cut off culturally. It was a town where the divide between the haves and have nots, the thriving merchants and gentry on one hand and the tin miners, fishermen and smugglers on the other, was great, but for those on whom fortune smiled there were plenty of ways to find entertainment or indulge in the arts.

  Late-eighteenth century Penzance had its own humane, literary and scientific societies, and from 1770 it also had a Ladies’ Book Club1, though it had to wait until 1818 for its first public library. At a time when books were prohibitively expensive, even for those who had a disposable income, the book club allowed subscribers access to the latest volumes and periodicals, as well as providing a forum for them to meet and discuss the latest scandalous reads away from the censure of their husbands.

  Music also played an important part in Penzance life and Elizabeth would have heard the songs and shanties sung by sailors in port. The tradition of folk-singing and folk-dancing is still strong in the town, allowing us a glimpse into the kind of everyday music that must have enchanted Elizabeth as much as it enchants tourists today. As a Branwell, she also had access to music of a rather more refined kind as concerts were often held in a room behind the Turk’s Head Inn.

  Penzance gained another exciting addition, for those who could afford it, in 1791 with the opening of the town’s own Assembly Rooms in which balls were often held2. Whilst not on the grand scale of the assembly rooms at Bath, so familiar from the works of Jane Austen, they still fulfilled the same primary purpose as a place for the well-off to see and to be seen, a place where respectable people met and shared gossip, and above all where unattached young women could dance with unattached young men, according to strict rules of etiquette, of course, and with a suitable relative in attendance as chaperone.

  The Assembly Rooms were built by Elizabeth’s uncle, Richard Branwell, and paid for by public subscription, to which we can assume Richard’s brother Thomas made a generous contribution. The opulent architecture of the rooms, the beautifully performed music, and above all the heady excitement of a dance, even the anticipation of whether you would be asked to dance, were an intoxicating mix for Elizabeth Branwell, and we know that memories of these days were her favourite topic of conversation throughout the decades she spent in Yorkshire. Balls were held regularly throughout the winter months, the temperate climate of West Penwith making it suitable for this activity and the wearing of finery that inevitably came with it all year round, and Elizabeth attended them in the company of her elder sisters, mother, or her favourite aunt Jane.

  Jane Branwell was the sister of Thomas, and was close to him and his children – in more ways than one, as she too lived on Penzance’s Chapel Street. Kind and generous to her nephew and nieces, she was also a devout and serious-minded woman, and by the time she had reached her late thirties unmarried it was thought by her acquaintances, if not said to her face, that she would remain a spinster for the rest of her life. Jane, however, had other plans – and their resolution led to a chain of events she could never have envisaged, and for which fans of classic literature across the world can be thankful.

  In 1783, a 21-year-old man named John Fennell, originally from Madeley in Shropshire, arrived in Cornwall to take up a position as an assistant schoolmaster in a Penzance school3. Cornwall was particularly attractive not only for its spectacular coastline and equitable weather but also because it had become a stronghold of support for Wesleyanism, what we today call Methodism, in which cause he strongly believed.

  It was most probably at a Wesleyan meeting that he first met Jane Branwell, for she herself was a committed Methodist, recorded as being an early member of the Penzance Wesleyan Society4. Jane was seven years John’s senior, but their beliefs were closely aligned, and over bible studies, public lectures and sermons on temperance they fell in love. Jane Branwell became Mrs. Fennell aged 37 at their wedding on 13 December 1792, at which point they moved to their shared home in Chapel Street where John set up a writing school. Elizabeth and her sisters were frequent visitors to the house of their Uncle John and Aunt Jane, but in 1805 they moved to Shropshire. In 1812, word reached Elizabeth that they had moved even further afield, this time to the West Riding of Yorkshire. She must have thought she would never see her beloved aunt and uncle again, but this supposition proved to be very wrong.

  Although Jane Branwell, later Fennell, was the first member of the Branwell family to join the Penzance Wesleyan Society, all of the family became firm adherents to the beliefs and values espoused by John Wesley and his hymn-writing brother Charles. John Wesley was born in 1708 in Lincolnshire and ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1728. Gaining immediate recognition for his great piety and powerful preaching, he founded an association called ‘the Holy Club’ with his brother Charles and their fellow priest George Whitefield. It was this triumvirate that eventually led to the formation of the Methodist church and its schism from the official Anglican communion, after a long, and at times, dangerous, journey.

  John Wesley believed in preaching outdoors, and his doctrine that all people could find redemption in Christ, that no sinner was lost forever, as well as his support for liberal causes such as prison reform, the improvement of conditions for the working class, and the abolition of slavery, won him both friends and enemies in great numbers.

  The Methodist Church did not officially split from the Church of England until long after John Wesley’s death in 1791, but he was an evangelical maverick at odds with many of the official Anglican doctrines, leading to attempts to suppress him and his supporters. The vicar of Madron, a wealthy landowner named Walter Borlase, was a vociferous opponent of Wesley in his early days, claiming that the preacher was nothing more than an agitator for the Jacobite cause and threatening to have him jailed if he should enter the region again5. Undaunted, Wesley found particular support in Cornwall, where his message was welcomed by people whose work was hard and whose lives were often short. He visited the county on a number of occasions, often preaching to huge crowds who had gathered to hear him. There can be no doubt that the Branwells attended these meetings as well, and that Elizabeth, dressed in her finest, would have been amongst the throng during his three addresses to Penzance in the 1780s. By this time Wesley was an old man, but still vigorous in his preaching. The enmity that many had held for him was now gone; even by the time he preached in Penzance in 1860, he had recorded in his journal that, ‘at Noon I preached on the cliff near Penzance, where no one now gives an uncivil word6.’

  By the time of John Wesley’s death, his rise in fortunes had reached its zenith, and he was acclaimed by many to be ‘the best loved man in England and Ireland7’. He had preached discipline, that children should obey their parents, that workers should turn away from gambling and drinking, but he had also preached hope and love, and it was a message that resonated across Cornwall and beyond. Certainly, it was a message that Elizabeth Branwell cherished all her life, and one that she imparted to the Brontë children during their Bible reading lessons with her.

  The West Riding of Yorkshire was another hotbed of Methodism, and by the time Elizabeth Branwell arrived in Haworth in 1821 it had overtaken the official Church of England in popularity. An ecclesiastical census of 1851, when Patrick was still minister at the Anglican parish church, shows that Haworth’s three Methodist churches had 879 in attendance on a Sunday, whereas the Church of England church had only 3838. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Branwell dutifully attended the services at St Michael and All Angels’ church presided o
ver by her brother-in-law; it was another sign of her constant determination to put family before self, something John Wesley would doubtless have approved of.

  Penzance’s first Methodist chapel was built on Queen’s Street in 1790 and it held up to a thousand people, but Thomas Branwell and others soon saw that this was not large enough to meet the demands of the town’s growing Wesleyan community. He became the leading force behind the move to build a new, even larger, Wesleyan church and it was opened on Chapel Street in 1814. The new chapel, still in use today, can accommodate a congregation of 1,350, and it was a day of special pride and honour to the Branwells when it first opened its doors. Sitting in the front pew, Elizabeth looked around with a smile of satisfaction on her face, nodding to the neighbours and acquaintances behind her – unfortunately by then, as we shall see, neither her father nor her mother, who had done so much to bring the building into existence, could be there alongside her to see the fruits of their labours, and even her younger sister Maria was far away.

  The large crowds that gathered to see John Wesley and other Methodist preachers, the opening of dedicated Wesleyan chapels, the popularity of Methodist schools, such as the one that John Fennell worked at, all these were signs of the grip that this new evangelical faith had on Penzance in the late-eighteenth century. Another sign was an influx of Methodist priests into the area, one of whom, John Kingston, became particularly well known to Elizabeth Branwell and her family.

  The Reverend John Kingston arrived in Penzance in 1799 aged 299, and as proof of his missionary zeal he had just returned from seven years as a Methodist preacher in America. John Kingston’s own memoir, serialised in The Methodist Magazine, describes in great detail his journey to and across North America, and it is clear that at this time he was a very devout and pious man. His religious conversion occurred at the age of 16:

  ‘In the sixteenth year of my age, it pleased the Lord, by the ministry of the Methodist Preachers, to convince me of sin, righteousness, and judgement. The thoughts of Death and Eternity filled me with fear. I was burdened with the weight of my misery, and my heart was humbled before the Lord. I withdrew from all my old companions in as decent a manner as I could, and associated with persons of religious character10.’

  Kingston then describes how, after first ministering to inhabitants of London’s workhouses he set sail as a missionary in 1791. His first port of call was the West Indies, where he was horrified by the inhumanity of the slave trade:

  ‘Presently our eyes were attracted by the horrible sight of a slave ship, which lately arrived from Africa, laden with men and women almost naked. We were penetrated with horror and grief, when we contemplated the situation of these poor wretches, and anticipated the bondage and misery to which accursed avarice had doomed them11.’

  John Kingston’s memoirs detail how dangerous this missionary work was for him and for many other Wesleyan preachers at the time, as he survived hurricanes, violent attacks and bouts of the ‘black fever’ that carried away some of his fellow missionaries. Leaving the Caribbean islands behind, he sailed on to Boston and then New York, where he arrived just in time for an epidemic of yellow fever:

  ‘In the month of September, the yellow fever broke out in New York, and raged with great violence, supposed to originate from the intense heat of the weather, and the great influx of the lower class of people from Domingo. The mortality was so great that sometimes 80 were buried in a day12.’

  These memoirs give us great insight into the minds of a man who would make a significant impact, for better or for worse, on the Branwell family. John Kingston was a man who believed passionately in his Wesleyan faith, and in the common humanity and equality of man. He was a man who faced danger without flinching, and yet he also at times alluded to his own frailties and weaknesses. John returned to Britain in 1798, taking up a post in Haverford West13, but a year later he made a fateful move to Penzance.

  Fired by the missionary zeal that had helped him through his years in America, Kingston was by now an experienced and charismatic preacher. He was also a man of some celebrity within the Wesleyan community, as his arrival in Penzance coincided with the serialisation of his memoirs in The Methodist Magazine. These were doubtless read by Elizabeth Branwell and others in her family, and they were filled with excitement at the thought of hearing sermons given by the man who had seen and endured so much for their shared faith.

  One member of the family in particular was mesmerised by the tanned, weather-beaten man standing at the pulpit before them – Elizabeth’s sister Jane. She was by this time 26 years of age, and although she had met many seemingly eligible young men through her family’s social connections, and at dances at the Assembly Rooms, none had caught her interest. Jane dreamed not of a life of steady domesticity in Penzance, becoming the wife of one of the families with whom her father did business, but instead longed for a life of romance and adventure like the heroines of the books she borrowed from the Ladies Reading Club. From the moment she saw John Kingston, Jane knew that was what he offered her – although she could not have guessed how dramatically different her reality would be to her dreams.

  1799, the year that John Kingston arrived in Penzance, was a turbulent year for the Branwells. Their fortunes were continuing to rise financially and socially, as evidenced by the series of portraits of the family that James Tonkin was commissioned to paint, but it was also the year that Margaret Fisher, as she had become on marrying Charles Fisher seven years earlier, died. Elizabeth was now the second oldest surviving Branwell daughter, and she was already a figure to look up to for Jane, Benjamin, Maria and Charlotte.

  It was in this capacity that Jane, three years her senior, approached Elizabeth one evening in 1799, with the news that she was in love with the town’s new Methodist preacher and that she believed her feelings to be reciprocated. This was joyous news to Elizabeth as she thought of her sister Jane following in the footsteps of their aunt of the same name and marrying a man who was an important figure in the local Wesleyan church. Her sister’s news would also have brought a tinge of sadness, however, as the life of a Wesleyan minister could be a volatile and itinerant one, and if Jane married Reverend Kingston it was sure to lead her away from her family and into a new life in a new town, or even a new country.

  This may also have been on the minds of Thomas and Anne Branwell when they were approached by John Kingston asking for their daughter’s hand in marriage. His position within the Wesleyan church, enhanced by his missionary exploits as detailed within The Methodist Magazine, should have made him a suitable match for their daughter, and yet Thomas held grave concerns about Kingston’s character and his ability to be a good husband for Jane. Nevertheless, within a year of their first meeting, John Kingston and Jane Branwell were married in St Maddern’s church on 12 June 1800. Elizabeth, acting as a bridesmaid14 to the sister who had made her a confidante, envisaged a glorious future for the happy couple and a large family of their own to raise. This last point, at least, would be fulfilled.

  Elizabeth saw two sides of Penzance as she grew into her maturity. As the second eldest child of Thomas Branwell she participated in society dinners and events when Jane was unavailable, where she became known both for her kindness and humility. She also saw, however, the other side of Penzance life; the boisterous, alcohol-fuelled life that could be heard ringing through the streets on any evening. Life was hard for the miners and fishermen and many of them, especially those who had left their family life behind, sought solace, or at least an hour or two of oblivion, at the bottom of a bottle.

  One of Penzance’s most famous sons, Humphry Davy, recalled this side of Penzance in his memoir:

  ‘Amongst the middle and higher classes, there was little taste for literature, and still less for science, and their pursuits were rarely of a dignified or intellectual kind. Hunting, shooting, wrestling, cockfighting, generally ending in drunkenness, were what they most delighted in. Smuggling was carried on to a great extent, and drunkenness and a low s
cale of morals were naturally associated with it15.’

  Humphry Davy was born two years before Elizabeth Branwell and is likely to have known her brother Benjamin. From an early age, his academic and scientific genius were evident, and he went on to write his name in history as the first person to isolate a series of elements including calcium, sodium and potassium, as well as for inventing the safety lamp that was given his name – a device that saved the lives of countless tin, copper and coal miners in Cornwall and indeed throughout the world.

  Elizabeth was very proud of this illustrious man from her own home town, and sang his praises to the Brontë children that she helped raise, but it is hardly likely that she would have agreed with his rather jaundiced view of Penzance society. Whilst smuggling and drunkenness was all too common in the town, they were particular targets of the Wesleyan church, and so followers like the Branwells would have eschewed such behaviour.

  This is not to say that Elizabeth turned her back on the fun and frivolous side of life in this growing town. From the stories she told when in Haworth, she clearly revelled in the balls and dances she attended, and as she returned to this topic time and again in conversation we have to wonder if there was something, or someone, in particular that made these memories so pleasant to her. She was the respected daughter of one of the town’s leading merchants, a man of property and position, and from her portrait we can ascertain that she was not unattractive as a young woman, so it seems natural to question whether Elizabeth had a suitor at some point in her life?