Aunt Branwell and the Brontë Legacy

by Aunt Branwell

  She was there on the morning of 14 February 1840, when her three nieces received their first ever Valentine’s Day cards3, looking on with a smile as Charlotte, Emily and Anne struggled to contain their excitement. Elizabeth may even have been in on the secret that it took her nieces some hours to discern: the cards (along with a further one for Ellen Nussey who was a guest at the parsonage at the time) had been posted by Weightman who had walked all the way to Bradford in wintry conditions to post them in order to disguise the postmark.

  He was obviously a charming man, and greatly loved by the parishioners who later erected a handsome monument in his name4 - and we only have to remember their attempt to bury Reverend Redhead alive to see how they could be hard to please! As his stay at Haworth proceeded, Elizabeth also discerned a love for him from another source. She sat alongside Anne at church, and couldn’t fail to notice what Charlotte had also seen:

  ‘He [Weightman] sits opposite Anne at church sighing softly and looking out of the corners of his eyes to win her affection - and Anne is so quiet, her looks so downcast - they are a picture5.’

  Elizabeth knew her niece Anne better than anyone else, and could see that the handsome curate was winning her heart, as much for his good deeds as his good looks. We have seen how Elizabeth was given a place of honour at the Branwell weddings in Penzance, and she now dared to dream of one day attending a similar wedding in Haworth. Why shouldn’t it happen? she reasoned to herself: Anne was good hearted, bright and pretty, and there was nothing more natural than for a young curate making his way in the church to select a wife who was the daughter of a more experienced minister.

  Elizabeth may even have remained in Haworth partly in anticipation of an eventual union between Anne and William, or at least to give her favourite niece advice and guidance as she took her first steps on the path to love. On the face of it, her work in Haworth was done. Elizabeth had grown accustomed to the local accents, she no longer found the Haworth customs strange, and if the wind was as biting as ever at least it no longer surprised her with its ferocity, and yet at night she could still hear the sea crashing against the rocks of Mount’s Bay, could still picture the seagulls wheeling overhead as the latest catch was brought onto the quay. For over two decades she had held onto the dream of returning to the county she called home, and yet even now she remained.

  The overriding reason for this inertia was that Elizabeth now looked upon her sister’s children as her own. They had brought her love and companionship, along with all the trials and tribulations that also come with raising children, she had never expected to know. She loved them more than her native Cornwall, and however long she had left in life would be spent near them.

  It was a fortuitous decision for the Brontës, for all too soon her help was called upon again. In December 1841, Charlotte returned to Haworth having left Rawdon, and even more calamitously in March 1842, Branwell lost his post on the railways, sacked for failing to provide adequate supervision to his subordinates William Spence and Henry Killiner, one of whom had stolen over £11 from the station’s accounts6.

  It was a sudden turnaround in fortunes, but Charlotte was now ready to enact a plan that she and her sisters had dreamed of for a long time; they would open their own school. This was despite the fact that Emily’s temperament made her unsuited to teach others, as her time at Law Hill had shown, and that Charlotte had found teaching at Roe Head school an almost unbearable strain, as revealed in a series of notes of the time that have become known as her Roe Head Journal. A typical entry from 11 August 1836 reads:

  ‘In the afternoon Miss Ellen Lister was trigonometrically ecumenical about her French lessons. She nearly killed me between the violence of the irritation her horrid wilfulness excited and the labour it took to subdue it to a moderate appearance of calmness. My fingers trembled as if I had had twenty four hours tooth-ache, & my spirits felt worn down to a degree of desperate despondency7.’

  Nevertheless the opening of a school was a subject that the three sisters discussed often among themselves – Branwell’s unpredictable behaviour meant he could not be considered for this venture – and plans were beginning to become more concrete by the summer of 1841, as revealed in enthusiastic terms by Emily Brontë’s diary paper at the end of July:

  ‘A scheme is at present in agitation for setting us up in a school of our own. As yet nothing is determined but I hope and trust it may go on and prosper and answer our highest expectations8.’

  Running their own school would allow the sisters to set their own curriculum and their own rules, and of course they would be there to support each other when needed rather than stranded in the company of strangers. There was one problem, money, and it was the always forthright Charlotte who approached the only hope they had of obtaining the funds they would need, their Aunt Branwell. This was not the little kindnesses Elizabeth had bestowed upon her nephew and nieces down the years, but a substantial sum equivalent to many years’ wages for a teacher or governess, and yet as Charlotte revealed in a letter to Ellen, she did not refuse:

  ‘To come to the point – Papa & Aunt talk by fits and starts of our – id est – Emily, Anne & myself commencing a school!

  I have often you know said how much I wished such a thing [starting a school] but I never could conceive where the capital would come from for making such a speculation – I was well aware indeed, that Aunt had money – but I always considered that she was the last person who would offer a loan for the purpose in question. A loan however she has offered or rather intimates that she perhaps will offer in case pupils can be secured, an eligible situation obtained etc. etc. This sounds very fair – but still there are matters to be considered which throw something of a damp upon the Scheme. I do not expect that Aunt will risk more than 150£ on such a venture - & would it be possible to establish a respectable (not by any means a shewy) school, and to commence housekeeping with only that amount9?’

  This is a rather ungenerous response by Charlotte as £150 was three years of her aunt’s annuity, and over seven times Charlotte’s yearly salary as a teacher at Roe Head school. Elizabeth had also shown her characteristic practicality by advising the sisters to find suitable premises before handing over the money. For a while it looked as if this part of the problem had been solved as Margaret Wooler was selling her school, now at Dewsbury Moor, with a view to retiring. The school was offered to Charlotte at the very reasonable price of £100, and Elizabeth had no hesitation in offering this sum10, but before the offer could be taken up Charlotte’s plans had changed.

  Her friend Mary Taylor, along with her sister Martha, was now studying at the Chateau de Koekelberg school in Brussels, and her depiction of the city’s splendour in letters to Haworth had woken an urge to travel in Charlotte that superseded any plans for a school at the rather less elegant Dewsbury Moor. The new scheme was presented in a letter sent to her aunt by Charlotte, at that time still in Rawdon, in September 1841:

  ‘Dear Aunt… my friends recommend me, if I desire to secure permanent success, to delay commencing the school for six months longer, and by all means to contrive, by hook or by crook, to spend the intervening time in some school on the continent. They say schools in England are so numerous, competition so great, that without some such step towards attaining superiority we shall probably have a very hard struggle, and may fail in the end. They say, moreover, that the loan of £100, which you have been so kind as to offer us, will, perhaps, not all be required now, as Miss Wooler will lend us the furniture; and that, if the speculation is intended to be a good and successful one, half the sum, at least, ought to be laid out in the manner I have mentioned11.’

  Charlotte then goes on to explain that the cost of the journey would be £5 at most, and that as the cost of living in Belgium is half what it is in England it needn’t be a costly venture. She then appeals to her aunt’s good nature, while explaining at the same time why one of her nieces would not be partaking in the scheme:

  ‘These are advantages which wou
ld turn to vast account, when we actually commenced a school – and, if Emily could share them with me, only for a single half-year, we could take a footing in the world afterwards which we can never do now. I say Emily instead of Anne; for Anne might take her turn at some future period, if our school answered. I feel certain, while I am writing, that you will see the propriety of what I say; you always like to use your money to the best advantage; you are not fond of making shabby purchases; when you do confer a favour, it is often done in style; and depend upon it £50, or £100, thus laid out, would be well employed. Of course, I know no other friend in the world to whom I could apply on the subject except yourself. I feel an absolute conviction that, if this advantage were allowed to us, it would be the making of us for life… I know we have talents, and I want them to be turned to account. I look to you, aunt, to help us. I think you will not refuse… Believe me, dear aunt, your affectionate niece, C. Brontë12.’

  This was a masterful letter from Charlotte, during which she adjusts the £50 to £100 in passing, and appeals to all her aunt’s compassion and generosity, but she also has to explain Anne’s absence from the Brussels plan. Charlotte realised that Anne was Elizabeth’s favourite, and so had to convince her aunt that Anne was is no way being snubbed.

  Elizabeth now had a weighty decision to make. She did not approve of Anne’s absence, and knew that Charlotte invariably favoured Emily over her youngest sister, but on the other hand, Anne was doing well as a governess to the Robinson family and could continue in that role until her other sisters established a school at some point in the future.

  Elizabeth also worried how Charlotte, and especially Emily, would fare in an unknown country; after all, she had witnessed her sister Jane travel to a new land, America, and return in despair months later. Finally, of course, she would miss the companionship of these two nieces, although she would still have Branwell at the parsonage to occupy her time and thoughts.

  There were lots of arguments against supporting the scheme, but in spite of all that, Elizabeth was convinced of the common sense within Charlotte’s letter, and agreed that an investment now could set them up for life. The happiness of her sister’s children was, as always, Elizabeth’s priority, and after discussing the matter with Patrick she agreed to pay for Charlotte and Emily to travel to Brussels where they would attend the Pensionnat Heger school. It was a sign of Elizabeth’s confidence in her nieces’ abilities, and a grand gesture from a financial point of view. Her penultimate grand gesture.

  Charlotte, Emily, and Patrick, who accompanied them on their journey to Brussels and who then remained a few days in Belgium before returning to Haworth, arrived in the Belgian capital on 15 February 184213.

  Anne, still at Thorp Green Hall while her sisters explored the new country without her, now despaired at the prospect of ever opening a Brontë school, and she was dealt a further blow on 6 September 1842, when William Weightman died from cholera, contracted while visiting a sick parishioner. Anne’s dreams of love passed with him, and from that moment until the end of her life she wrote a series of powerful poems of love and mourning. Her brother also mourned the assistant curate, as Weightman had become a close companion. Much worse was to follow, as Branwell revealed in an anguished letter to his friend Francis Grundy on 25 October 1842:

  ‘I have had a long attendance at the deathbed of the Rev. William Weightman, one of my dearest friends, and now I am attending at the deathbed of my aunt, who has been for twenty years as my mother. I expect her to die in a few hours … excuse this scrawl, my eyes are too dim with sorrow to see well14.’

  Chapter 14

  Rest at Last

  ‘I die but when the grave shall press,

  The heart so long endeared to thee,

  When earthly cares no more distress,

  And earthly joys are nought to me,

  Weep not, but think that I have past,

  Before thee o’er a see of gloom,

  Have anchored safe and rest at last,

  Where tears and mourning cannot come.

  ‘Tis I should weep to leave thee here,

  On that dark Ocean sailing drear,

  With storms around and fears before,

  And no kind light to point the shore,

  But long or short though life may be,

  ‘Tis nothing to eternity,

  We part below to meet on high,

  Where blissful ages never die.’

  Emily Brontë, Lines

  Haworth was a growing and increasingly industrialised village at the time Elizabeth Branwell lived there, and life for its inhabitants was frequently tough and short thanks to almost annual epidemics of typhoid and cholera. Indeed, the twenty-one years that Elizabeth spent in the village was longer than the average life expectancy in Haworth during many of the years she spent there1.

  Haworth Parsonage was protected from some of the causes of these diseases as it had its own spring water supply, but the Brontë children in particular often found themselves suffering from colds and flu, especially when the icy winds of winter blew in from the moors. Anne’s depiction of this in a letter to Ellen Nussey of January 1848, reflected similar scenes from the preceding years:

  ‘We are all cut up by this cruel east wind, most of us i.e. Charlotte, Emily, and I have had the influenza or a bad cold instead, twice over within the space of a few weeks; Papa has had it once, Tabby has hitherto escaped it altogether2.’

  Nevertheless, their Aunt Elizabeth seemed to enjoy robust health, perhaps because of the silk shawls she pulled tightly around her or the protective pattens she clicked around in. Despite being 65 when she waved Charlotte and Emily off on the first leg of their voyage to Brussels at the start of 1842, they could have had little idea that they would never see their aunt again.

  Mme and M Heger, the man Charlotte fell in love with during her time in Brussels and who provided inspiration for the Rochester of Jane Eyre and Paul Emanuel of Villette, presented their pupils Charlotte and Emily with a letter from home on 2 November 1842; it was passed from sister to sister with a trembling hand, and they read in silence the news, from their father, that their aunt had fallen gravely ill and was not expected to survive. They made immediate plans to leave the Pensionnat and return to England but on the next morning, as they were preparing to depart, another letter arrived. The black bordered paper was all they needed to see for confirmation that their Aunt Branwell was dead.

  In fact, Elizabeth Branwell had died, aged 66, on 29 October 1842, while the letter bringing news of her illness was in transit from Haworth to Brussels. Branwell’s letter of 25 October lamented that she would die within hours, but in fact she lingered on in terrible pain for another four days in scenes reminiscent of those Patrick had witnessed with his wife Maria more than two decades earlier. The official cause of death recorded on her death certificate was ‘exhaustion from constipation3’, but she died from a strangulation of the bowel.

  Elizabeth’s last days consisted of agonising hours drifting from consciousness to insensibility, but in her lucid moments she remembered how her beloved sister Maria had met her end in the same fashion, in the same house, probably the same bed. Her thoughts dwelt once again on her family in Cornwall, the beautiful coast she would see no more, and then upon her nieces Charlotte and Emily alone together in a land far away. We do not know if Anne arrived in time to comfort her aunt, but it seems likely as she was only a day’s travel from Haworth; certainly, she was present at the funeral which was held five days later. Patrick was by Elizabeth’s side reading from the scriptures; in their time together, they had become more than brother and sister-in-law, they were close friends, and would have been inseparable companions in old age. One other man was present, weeping inconsolably by her bed: Branwell Brontë, judged by others, but always loved by his aunt, had remained by her side throughout her ordeal. It is his second letter to Francis Grundy that bears tribute to the finer feelings that he was capable of, and also to the great affection Elizabeth was held in by those who
knew her better than anyone:

  ‘I am incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonising suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood4.’

  Despite the dreadful second letter from their father, Emily and Charlotte continued their voyage home as planned, knowing how much their father, sister and brother now needed them. They arrived in Haworth on 8 November to a house still silently reeling. There were no more sounds of pattens on stone, the only noise now came from the steady ticking of the grandfather clock.

  The returning sisters had missed their aunt’s funeral held on the third of November, and presided over by Rev James Bradley from the neighbouring parish of Oakworth5, but they were all too familiar with her place of rest. Visitors to Haworth’s St Michael and All Angels’ church today may notice an inscription upon a pillar near the altar; it reads:

  ‘The Brontë family vault is situated below this pillar, near to the place where the Brontë’s pew stood in the old church. The following members of the family were buried here Maria and Patrick, Maria, Elizabeth, Branwell, Emily Jane, Charlotte.’

  Anne is missing from this memorial as she died, and was buried, in Scarborough, but there is another person missing whose name should be there, for also in that vault lies eternally Elizabeth Branwell, buried, as per her wishes, ‘as near as convenient to the remains of my dear sister6.’

  This provision was stipulated by Elizabeth Branwell at the start of her will made on 30 April 1833, before witnesses William Brown (brother of the Haworth sexton John Brown,) his son William Brown Jr., and John Tootill, in which she also asks that, ‘my funeral shall be conducted in a moderate and decent manner7.’